The last patient with Ebola in Mali has been successfully treated, said the country’s Ministry of Health. With no other known cases, it appears the West African nation has defeated Ebola. From the AP:
Mali has recorded eight cases of Ebola, all of them linked to people who crossed from neighboring Guinea. The country now has no confirmed or suspected cases, according to the ministry, but authorities are still monitoring 26 people who had contact with the sick. A person infected with Ebola can take up to 21 days to show symptoms.
The last patient was discharged on Thursday after several Ebola tests came back negative, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.
Because people are still being monitored and a sick person could cross the border again, the government warned Malians to remain vigilant.
Countries are only declared free of Ebola when 42 days ? twice the maximum incubation period ? have passed since anyone has had contact with a confirmed or probable case.
In the current outbreak, Ebola has sickened more than 18,200 people, the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization. Of those, nearly 6,600 have died.
A photographer for The Washington Post sent to cover the outbreak in Liberia died on Thursday after collapsing while returning on foot from a village where he’d been working, the newspaper reported.
Michel du Cille, 58, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died before he reached Phebe Hospital in Bong County, Information Minister Lewis Brown told The Associated Press on Friday. It took two hours, traveling on dirt roads, to get Du Cille to the hospital after he collapsed, according to the paper.
Health officials in Bong have been instructed to send the body to Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, Brown said.
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Global Health and Development Beat
Liberia’s Supreme Court on Saturday ruled that Senate elections in the West African nation should go ahead, rejecting a petition to suspend the vote until an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus is brought under control.
Bruce Aylward, the head of Ebola response at the World Health Organisation, said Sierra Leone was well placed to contain the disease — its worst outbreak on record — with infrastructure, organisation and aid.
A protective suit designed by a team from Johns Hopkins has been chosen as one of the winners in a global competition for solutions to increase the protection and comfort of front-line workers battling Ebola, run by USAID.
After decades making brief, murderous forays from central Africa’s forests, Ebola erupted into a global emergency in 2014, yet its success could spell its downfall as scientists scramble to relegate it to a footnote of medical history.
One year after mass violence broke out in South Sudan, battles between government forces and rebels continue, and aid officials say international assistance is needed to help residents stave off mass hunger.
Faced with a dearth of United Nations peacekeepers, lack of funding and competition from other global crises, relief agencies are struggling to contain a growing humanitarian disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining heartland.
In South Sudan’s Blue Nile state, refugees tell of indiscriminate bombardments, beatings, and rapes behind government lines.
Haiti’s Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe announced his resignation early Sunday, following repeated calls for him to step down amid anti-government protests and a political crisis in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
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Spotlight on PSI
Remarks on the passing of PSI and Marie Stopes International co-founder Dr Tim Black, CBE., from PSI president and CEO Karl Hofmann:
PSI is deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. Tim Black, CBE, one of our founders and a leader in global health, family planning, and the reproductive health and rights of women.
In addition to founding PSI, Dr. Black and his wife also founded Marie Stopes International, of which he served as CEO for many years.
He leaves behind a remarkable legacy of innovative thinking and pioneering in social marketing, which remains at the core of PSI’s approach to our work today. Dr. Black’s work had the profoundly positive effect of reaching women and couples with
family planning options throughout the developing world for more than 40
years.We celebrate Tim¹s life and accomplishments and mourn the loss.
Our thoughts are with his family, and with the entire MSI family.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Kaci Hickox, the nurse made famous for refusing quarantine, speaks with Humanosphere’s Tom Paulson about her experience and explains, in an accompanying article, why it was important to take a stand against forced quarantine. An excerpt from her OpEd:
I keep wondering, how did we get here – to a place where fear and ignorance so easily overwhelms science and compassion? As I look around, I see a disturbing level of manipulation from many so-called leaders. I see a misuse of leadership. Throughout history, we have grappled with the fear that the unknown brings. In the early 1980s, fear and the unknown caused some to suggest mandatory quarantine of anyone infected with the HIV virus. With time, we learned how HIV is spread and strong, compassionate leaders helped ensure that persons living with HIV/AIDS were accepted and supported. The same knowledge gain and leadership is necessary for the U.S. to begin to build the resources to stop Ebola and keep Americans safe.
If we bury our heads in the sand and hope that Ebola will go away and we will be safe, we will lose the battle against Ebola. Actions that have undermined our ability to recruit and send experts in medicine, infection control, and water and sanitation to West Africa are counterproductive to our Ebola response as well as harmful to the individuals affected. Unfortunately, the Ebola outbreak is nowhere near over.
A recent report by MSF highlighted that much of the aid to West Africa for the Ebola response has “focused primarily on financing and/or building Ebola case management facilities, leaving staffing them up to NGOs and local healthcare staff who do not have the expertise to do so.” Another plea for the necessary human resources in order to halt this outbreak.
I’m afraid that many people did not consider how poor policies, politics, and ignoring science would adversely affect our ability to enhance our response and stop this outbreak.
In the U.S., we now have greater stigmatization against Ebola and healthcare workers who are stigmatized upon return.
We have conflicting, inconsistent policies for returning aid workers depending on where they fly into or where they live. Many aid workers have written to me in concern. Some are lucky enough to live in states where they are being appropriately monitored and supported without being shunned.
Others, living in states where in-home quarantines are being applied, have decided to stay home because they fear the discrimination their spouses and children might face if they fight. I can feel the sadness, disappointment, and hurt in their words as they describe feeling alone and abandoned by their country.
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Capital Events
Tuesday
5:30 PM – Ebola: The Culture of Preparing for and Recovering from Pandemics – Va Tech
Wednesday
9:00 AM – Emerging Priorities for Maternal Health in Nigeria – Wilson Center
4:30 PM – Global Health Market Shaping Forum: Discussion of the Practice and Potential – CGD
Thursday
12:30 PM – Health-Wealth Trade-offs: Effects of Mineral Mining in Developing Countries – CGD
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
