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Blair Peterson

As Ebola Rages, Poor Planning Thwarts Efforts - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-planning-thwarts-efforts.html

International Relations Ebola Public Health

shared by Blair Peterson on 07 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • But one piece is missing: staff. The facility opened recently with a skeleton crew. Now, in an especially hard-hit area where people are dying every day because they cannot get into an Ebola clinic, 60 of the 80 beds at the Kerry Town Ebola clinic are not being used.
  • It is like this with a lot here: good intentions, bad planning. Aid officials in Sierra Leone say poor coordination among aid groups, government mismanagement and some glaring inefficiencies are costing countless lives.
  • Even after patients recover, many treatment centers delay releasing them for more than a week until there are enough other survivors, sometimes dozens, to hold one huge goodbye ceremony for everyone — again, keeping desperately needed beds occupied. “I just wanted to get home and see my wife,” said Suliman Wafta, a recent Ebola survivor treated nearby. “But I had to wait eight extra days.
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  • “Why are the British here? To end Ebola, or party?” read a headline in a local newspaper. It added, “While their American counterparts are working hard to end Ebola in Liberia, our so-called colonial masters are busy living the life of Riley.”
  • Like others, the official kept citing the “Brits’ primacy” in Sierra Leone — a reference to how, several months ago, Western powers divided Ebola responsibilities in West Africa along historical lines, with the United States helping Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves in 1822; France helping a former colony, Guinea; and Britain helping its own former colony, Sierra Leone.
  • Many aid officials in Sierra Leone said they crave a more effective command structure. The government runs a national emergency center, but aid officials said that with scores of foreign experts, government delegations and private charities flocking here, coordination was still messy, with many gaps and overlaps. It is extremely difficult, they said, to get even the most basic information, including how many treatment centers exist.
  • There are also growing questions about corruption, with the government announcing recently that it had found 6,000 “ghost medical workers” on its payroll, even as real Ebola burial teams and front-line health officers say they have not been paid in weeks.
Blair Peterson

As Ebola Ebbs in Africa, Focus Turns From Death to Life - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-turns-from-death-to-life.html

International Relations ebola Public Health africa

shared by Blair Peterson on 02 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • While many have emphasized the enormous assistance hauled into the region by the United States and international organizations, there is strong evidence, especially here in Monrovia, that the biggest change came from the precautions taken by residents themselves.“Fundamentally, this is about the extent to whi
  • Reeling from the explosion of infections in August, volunteer Ebola watchdog groups sprang up in many neighborhoods, typically overseen by local elders and led by educated youths, drawing from a long history of community organizing to survive war, poverty and government neglect.
  • “Heroes emerged in every community,” said Dr. Mosoka Fallah, a Harvard-trained Liberian epidemiologist who often acted as a liaison between neighborhoods and the government. “The volunteer task forces may be the biggest reason behind the drop in October.”
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  • He said that the region’s chiefs enlisted the traditional leaders in the area and put together bylaws that barred residents from hiding their sick, interfering with health workers or carrying out traditional burials that increased the risk of spreading the disease by touching infected corpses.
  • We threatened that anybody who tried to do a traditional burial would be banished from the chiefdom,” he said
Blair Peterson

BBC News - Ebola crisis: The economic impact - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...business-28865434

International Relations ebola Public Health Sierra Leone

shared by Blair Peterson on 03 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • He said President Ernest Bai Koroma revealed this staggering and depressing news to ministers at a special cabinet meeting. "The agricultural sector is the most impacted in terms of Ebola because the majority of the people of Sierra Leone - about 66% - are farmers," he said.
  • Rio Tinto, the world's third largest mining company, which owns a share in Simandou, has donated $100,000 to the World Health Organization's work in the area and is also making sanitation equipment available to local people there.
  • A smaller British company, London Mining, has moved out some its non-essential expatriate staff from Sierra Leone, where mining has accounted for much of the country's recent growth. According to the International Monetary Fund, Sierra Leone's output grew by 20% last year; excluding iron ore mining, it grew by 5.5%.
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  • Sierra Leone and Liberia have both emerged from horrific civil wars and managed to rebuild their economies.
Blair Peterson

Ebola and U.S. National Security - 0 views

www.internationalpolicydigest.org/...ebola-u-s-national-security

Public Health ebola International Relations security

shared by Blair Peterson on 16 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. government is sending flimsy plastic aprons and gauze masks to the Africans with assurances that the donning and removal processes are where the majority of the risk to caregivers is realized. This is simply not true. As is evident by the precautions currently being taken in the U.S. and other developed countries, multiple layers of protection are employed by health workers, and cadavers are treated as highly infectious.
  • President Obama has sent nearly 5,000 members of the U.S. military to West Africa to assist in trying to stop the spread of the disease for a very good reason — the problem is quickly spinning out of control, and has the potential to become a serious national security concern.
  • Since 2010, the Department of Defense has partnered with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Tekmira was given ‘fast track’ authority to develop a vaccine earlier this year.
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  • n the interim, if a member of Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or Al Shabaab were inclined to spread the disease from Africa to the U.S. or Europe, all he or she would have to do is become infected and travel to these countries before becoming symptomatic.
Blair Peterson

One Year Later, Ebola Outbreak Offers Lessons for Next Epidemic - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lessons-for-next-epidemic.html

International Relations ebola Public Health

shared by Blair Peterson on 24 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The effort has been messy, inefficient and expensive, often lagging the epidemic’s twists in tragic ways.
  • Despite difficulty filling positions, the W.H.O. now reports that it has more than 700 people working at 77 field sites, the largest emergency response in its history.
  • Charities with no background treating Ebola patients began running hospitals specialized for Ebola care, some of which were built by militaries and others staffed by hundreds of personnel from China and Cuba who were also facing Ebola for the first time and trying to overcome language challenges.
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  • “The level of resourcefulness and dedication shown by Sierra Leoneans involved in the front lines is the most extraordinary civic mobilization action I’ve ever seen in my country,” said O. B. Sisay, director of the situation room at the National Ebola Response Center in Freetown, which formerly housed a special war crimes court. “To some extent that has helped cement a sense of nationhood here.”
  • Reforms have been proposed, but agencies have been slow to acknowledge their mistakes publicly and reckon with them, decreasing the chances that change will occur.
  • InterAction, an alliance of United States-based relief and development groups. “I sat in on a lot of discussions of InterAction in the fall over insurance and medical evacuation.”
  • million budget has been raised so far, a W.H.O. spokeswoman said.
Blair Peterson

Larry Brilliant is humanity's best hope against the next pandemic (Wired UK) - 1 views

www.wired.co.uk/...2

International Relations Ebola Public Health pandemic

shared by Blair Peterson on 11 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The key goals of the pandemics team at the SGTF are detecting an outbreak faster, verifying that it's a real sign and getting a connected network of people to talk about what's going on.
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