The hardest hit of the West African nations facing the deadly Ebola outbreak, Liberia, has set a national goal of recording no new cases by Christmas, December 25. From VOA:
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in a nationwide radio address Sunday that her country’s path to recovery will be difficult. She said Liberia’s health care system must be better prepared for any future disease epidemic, with sharp improvements also needed in the country’s economy and governance.
She shifted several cabinet officials, saying it was necessary to appoint a team of officials “that is understanding of the prevailing challenges.”
More than 2,800 of West Africa’s 5,165 Ebola deaths have been recorded in Liberia.
Also Sunday, U.S. health officials said travelers from Mali will be subject to the same screening and monitoring as people arriving from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. That includes taking arriving travelers’ temperatures and questioning them about their health and possible exposure to the Ebola virus.
Although Mali is not suffering from a widespread Ebola outbreak, there have been a number of confirmed cases there in recent days.
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Global Health and Development Beat
The Ebola epidemic in Guinea is seriously compromising the fight against malaria, its government said. In scores of cases, doctors are confusing malaria with Ebola, delaying the right life-saving treatment.
The company at the center of a probe into why more than a dozen women died after being sterilized in India has denied that the antibiotic tablets it manufactured were contaminated with a chemical compound commonly found in rat poison.
Dutch authorities said on Sunday they had found a highly contagious strain of bird flu at a poultry farm in the central Netherlands and set about destroying 150,00 chickens.
Tanzania’s parliament has received a report on the findings of an investigation into corruption allegations in the energy sector, officials said on Sunday, an issue that has led to donors delaying aid and weakened its currency.
About 160 Chinese health workers arrived on Saturday in Liberia, where they are due to staff a new $41 million Ebola clinic that, unlike most other foreign interventions, is being built and fully run by Chinese personnel.
The United Nations mission in Mali has cancelled plans to renew a contract with a private clinic providing care to its peacekeepers after a case of Ebola was missed and spread from there.
As part of its $1 billion effort to make contraceptives more accessible to women in the developing world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is joining with a pharmaceutical company and other aid groups to produce and distribute a simpler version of an injectable contraceptive.
The top United Nations coordinator for cholera response in Haiti says support for initiatives to combat cholera has been “disappointing,” noting that while it may be possible to eliminate cholera in about a decade, at the current rate of funding, it would take more than 40 years to do the job.
The New York Times profiles Michael Weinstein, the head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and a strong opponent of the much touted HIV medicine Truvada.
Despite efforts aimed at reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, the issue of stigmatisation and discrimination against people living with the disease has continued to constitute a clog in the war against the it, reports BusinessDay.
Mexico has detected its first domestic case of the painful mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya in the southwest of the country, the state government of Chiapas said.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz discusses the possibility of unleashing the power of global health research and development through Open Labs. He writes in the Lancet Global health blog:
In January, 2010, an unprecedented step was taken to progress research into diseases of the developing world when global pharmaceutical company GSK announced it was creating the world’s first Open Lab. The doors of its Tres Cantos diseases of the developing world research facility just outside Madrid would be unlocked and external researchers would be invited in, to work alongside GSK scientists. 4 years since its creation, the Open Lab model is emerging as a success story. The Tres Cantos facility is now a thriving international hub for research into diseases of the developing world and GSK is currently establishing a second Open Lab for research in to non-communicable diseases in Africa. There’s now a growing consensus that this open innovation approach is key to tackling disease in the developing world.
It’s imperative that we find new, better treatments for the diseases affecting the world’s poorest communities. Primarily because the scale of human suffering at the hands of these diseases is immense and we have a responsibility to address this. But also because helping people live more productive and prosperous lives will inevitably boost economic development in these countries, the positive effects of which would reverberate globally.
Yet despite the evident benefits, investment has been scarce. The biology of many diseases of the developing world is notoriously complex and when this is viewed in the context of the limited commercial opportunity in this field, it’s not hard to see why companies have shied away from investing. Based on a recognition that the challenges of this area are too great for any single country, organisation, or government to succeed alone, the Open Lab has turned the traditional R&D model of closed innovation – of companies working behind closed doors and guarding the findings of their research – on its head. Here, external researchers from leading research institutions around the world are invited to work with GSK scientists on their own projects, accessing GSK drug discovery and pre-clinical expertise.
This is open innovation at its best. With this intensely collaborative mindset, The Tres Cantos Open Lab has created a “safe environment” with no strings attached, which has encouraged scientists to openly discuss their research, share data, work across scientific boundaries and institutions, and disseminate knowledge through joint publications.
While it’s still too early to evaluate the success of the Tres Cantos Open Lab in terms of drug approvals, it’s safe to say the Open Lab approach has been an unprecedented success in encouraging research in to diseases of the developing world and in creating an energy and excitement in this field that was previously lacking.
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Capital Events
Monday
9:00 AM – International Development and the Private Sector – CSIS
10:00 AM – Aid for e-Trade: Accelerating the Global e-Commerce Revolution – CSIS
3:30 PM – Neglected Tropical Diseases and Blue Marble Health – Georgetown University
Tuesday
10:00 AM – Subcommittee Hearing: Fighting Ebola: A Ground-Level View – US House Committee on Foreign Affairs
12:00 PM – Post-Conflict State-Building and Public Health Recovery: What Does the Ebola Pandemic in Liberia Teach? – GMU
Wednesday
12:00 PM – Understanding the Global Threat of Ebola – Universal Peace Federation
7:00 PM – Interfaith Prayer Service for Ebola Relief in West Africa – Faith Community Working Group
Thursday
2:00 PM – Addressing Gender Based Violence and Maternal Health in Times of Crisis – Wilson Center
7:15 PM – Film Screening of “The Priest’s Children” – Elliott School of International Affairs
Friday
2:30 PM – The Triumph of the City: How to Boost Productivity and Innovation – IADB
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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