Ebola Outbreak 2014

The World Health Organization sets out plans for reform, admitting it was too slow to respond to the "horrific" Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The United Nations said on Saturday Liberia was dealing with just five remaining cases of Ebola, in the clearest sign yet that the country is nearing the end of the outbreak.

Almost a year after the Ebola outbreak started in West Africa, no cure has been found and the death toll has climbed to almost 8,000 – but survivors are giving people hope.

..."Families in Africa in a normal situation would take children in two seconds," said Sister Barbara Brillant, a Franciscan Missionary of Mary who leads Liberia’s National Catholic Health Council and its Ebola response. "But right now they’re not. I want to believe the families will take them once the fear has died down or a vaccine is available."

Hundreds of children wind up, at least temporarily, in institutions or group homes where they’re quarantined for up to 21 days while awaiting Ebola testing results or the onset of symptoms. Brooks characterized these settings as "an emergency intervention," noting that workers in the UNICEF-led family tracing and reunification network start trying to identifying kinship or other placements almost immediately....

The UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) has reported that a main United Nations logistics hub managed by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Guinea is fully operational despite the fire that swept through the facility last week threatening medicines and laboratory materials used in the fight against Ebola.

In 1976, when Peter Piot, a young Belgian microbiologist, was sent to investigate an outbreak of a mysterious virus in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire), he could never have predicted how the new pathogen that he viewed through his microscope would change his life – nor the devastation it would cause nearly four decades later...

The economic impact of Ebola on African economies in 2015 will be less severe than previously thought, the World Bank said in a report on Tuesday, causing just a fraction of the more than $25 billion in losses first expected.

The GDP impact on countries beyond the three directly affected -- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- is now estimated at $500 million as governments make progress in fighting the disease.

Adults cut back on food in order to feed their children, as incomes decline and food prices climb in Ebola-hit areas

The three West African countries worst hit by Ebola risk a "double disaster" unless a multi-million dollar plan is put in place to help their economies recover, Oxfam said on Tuesday.

Ebola workers dress up as Santa, elves and Frosty the Snowman to bring some cheer to a treatment unit in Liberia.

A lockdown is declared in northern Sierra Leone, with shops and travel services shut for at least three days, in a bid to contain the Ebola virus.

West Africa's Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015, says a leading researcher who helped to discover the virus.

Peter Piot, who has just returned from Sierra Leone, told the BBC that he was encouraged by progress there and by the promise of new anti-viral therapies.

African nations need to be more engaged in the fight against the Ebola virus and stop relying on aid from Western governments, Ethiopia's prime minister said Monday.

Hailemariam Desalegn said the response to the epidemic in west Africa should not be "only for the non-Africans", urging African states to respond to an African Union appeal to send medical staff to affected areas.