EBOLA OUTBREAK: Tide Turning In Ebola Fight After Hard Learnt Lessons

A top United Nations official in the fight against Ebola greeted just three patients at one treatment center he visited this week in Sierra Leone. Families in Liberia are no longer required to cremate the remains of loved ones to halt the spread of the virulent disease.

And in the streets of Guinea's capital, it is rare to see the formerly ubiquitous plastic buckets of bleach and water for hand washing.

Ten months after it dawned on health officials that they were facing an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in west Africa, experts and officials agree the tide is turning, although previous lulls have proved short-lived. There is still no vaccine or licensed treatment, nor is it clear whether the international community has actually learned any lessons from an epidemic that killed at least 8,675 people.

"Things have changed drastically for the better — no one can deny that," said Aitor Sanchez Lacomba, Liberia country director for the International Rescue Committee. "How can we make sure that we don't have these kinds of situations in the future?"

Previous disease outbreaks, including SARS and bird flu, prompted calls to build strong health surveillance systems and to reinforce agencies like the World Health Organization. But little has changed.

"Recriminations are counterproductive, but it will be necessary to understand whether this outbreak could have been responded to quicker with less cost and less suffering," Dr. David Nabarro, UN Ebola chief, told the UN General Assembly this week.

Julius Kamara, a father to two girls who remain home instead of going to school in Freetown, Sierra Leone, said there are fewer checkpoints, restrictions on movements are being lifted but gatherings are banned and bars and clubs are closed.

"We are all looking forward to when life can get back to normal," he said.

Sierra Leone plans to reopen schools in March, following Guinea, which opened this week. Liberia is set to reopen schools on Feb. 2.

"The epidemic has turned," Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the new head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response known as UNMEER, recently declared. The number of cases in Guinea and Sierra Leone is at its lowest since August, and in Liberia it's the lowest since June.

Still, he and other officials caution that they lack crucial information about the remaining cases. Only about half of new cases in Guinea and Liberia are from known contacts; the remainder is getting infected from unknown sources.

No such statistics exist for Sierra Leone, where deaths are still being underreported because families want to carry out burials in accordance with tradition, which involves touching bodies — one of the quickest ways to spread Ebola.

"There are still numbers of new cases that are alarming, and there are hot spots that are emerging in new places that make me believe there is still quite a lot of the disease that we're not seeing," said Nabarro, the UN Ebola chief.

At its height, one estimate warned that as many as 1.4 million people could become infected with Ebola by mid-January if there were no additional interventions. Instead, the confirmed case toll is 21,797 with 8,675 deaths.

However, nearly every agency and government stumbled in its response to Ebola. In an internal draft document obtained by the Associated Press last year, WHO acknowledged there was "a failure to see that conditions for explosive spread were present right at the start."

The document said the agency was hampered by budget cuts and the need to battle other diseases flaring around the world.

"The world today doesn't have a proper organization to respond quickly to this kind of catastrophe," said Brice de le Vingne, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders.

On Sunday, WHO's executive board plans to discuss several proposals that could redefine how the UN health agency responds to outbreaks. In a recent report, WHO wondered whether the commitment to battling the dreaded disease will remain strong.
"The virus has demonstrated its tenacity time and time again," the report said. "Will national and international control efforts show an equally tenacious staying power?"

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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Worker Still Fearful Even As Infection Rate Slows Down

Epidemiologist and Ryerson University assistant professor Jordan Tustin, just back from Guinea, cautions against complacency, warning 'We're not good until we're at zero.'

For the ongoing Ebola epidemic, 2015 seems to have ushered in a hopeful new chapter: in Liberia, treatment centres are sitting empty; in Guinea, kids are finally heading back to school; and in Sierra Leone, the president is predicting zero new cases by end of March.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization reported 75 new infections since the day before — relatively good news considering that in October, the UN health agency was predicting up to 10,000 new cases every week by this point.

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But none of this is reassuring for epidemiologists like Jordan Tustin, an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s School of Occupational and Public Health. For her, only one number will let her exhale.


“We’re not good until we’re at zero,” said Tustin, 35. “We can never be complacent and think, ‘Oh it’s going down, it’s getting better.’ Until we’re at zero, that’s the only time that we can breathe.”

On Jan. 11, Tustin returned from a month-long stint in Guinea where she worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization. As an epidemiologist, she performed one of the most crucial jobs for stopping this Ebola epidemic, which has now infected 21,689 people and killed more than 8,600: finding new cases and tracking down their friends and family, a process known as contact tracing.

Anyone who watched Kate Winslet in the pandemic thriller Contagion will have already seen an epidemiologist in action. But in the mud-hut villages of Guinea’s Kankan prefecture, Tustin faced obstacles that Winslet’s character never had to worry about — for example, accessing a photocopier for her reports (the only one she could use was near the local university and powered by a generator) and getting fuel for her team, so that they could visit the villages and investigate potential new Ebola cases.

“One time during a meeting, I wrote down in my notebook, ‘Everything is about fuel.’ It was a recurring issue,” Tustin recalls. “If you have people in the field but they don’t have the tools to do their job . . . then Ebola will not go down to zero.”

READ ALSO: READ ALSO:EBOLA OUTBREAK: West Africa Strain Mutating Faster Than Drugs Being Developed

As the WHO’s Dr. Bruce Aylward once said, there is no such thing as having “a little bit less Ebola,” just as there is no such thing as being “a little bit pregnant.” “This is a horrible, unforgiving disease,” he told reporters in October. “You’ve got to get to zero.”

In Guinea, Tustin learned firsthand about the kind of dread and anxiety that can come with even a single additional case.

This Christmas, she found herself feeling hopeful. After celebrating with other aid workers at her hotel — where they dined on delicacies brought from France, and even a yule log — she went to bed with the sense that the situation in Kankan was coming under control.

The very next day, someone from a nearby village reported a sick woman; she was dead by the time Tustin’s team reached the hospital, which had already released the infectious corpse to her family. When they then rushed to the woman’s village, they found her body already been washed and prepared for burial, meaning several villagers were now likely exposed to the deadly virus.

This one missed case introduced an entirely new chain of Ebola transmission — and more than 60 villagers that Tustin and her team now had to follow for 21 days, Ebola’s maximum incubation period. More than 20 hospital workers also had to be placed in quarantine.

“There were days when I felt ‘We’ve got this. We’re following all our contacts, they’re welcoming us into their villages . . . feels good,” Tustin said. “Then you get that case that pops up out of nowhere . . . It’s frustrating.”

The Guinean government now aims to become Ebola-free by the middle of March. But for Tustin, she is reluctant to make any such predictions and warns that complacency is now the biggest threat to West Africa, which still needs the world’s help to stop this terrible epidemic.

“As human beings with compassion and as countries with great resources, we need to put more efforts into the response,” she said. “We can’t become complacent just because it is not in our backyard. One Ebola case is one too many.”


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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Mali Declared Ebola Free

The United Nations and Mali’s government have declared the West African nation free of Ebola following a 42-day period without a new case of the deadly virus.
The country’s Health Minister Ousmane Kone made an announcement during a national broadcast on Sunday night. “I declare on this day, January 18, 2015, the end of the end of the Ebola epidemic in Mali,”

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The country “had come out” of the epidemic, confirmed Ibrahima Soce Fall, the head of the Malian office of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

Countries must report no new cases for 42 days – or two incubation periods of 21 days – to be declared Ebola-free. Mali recorded seven deaths caused by the Ebola outbreak that began just over a year ago.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) data, the worst epidemic of the viral haemorrhagic fever on record has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

At least 21,296 people have so far been infected with the virus, the WHO has said,

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Mali’s last infected patient recovered and left hospital early last month. At one point health officials had been monitoring more than 300 contact cases.

Mali became the sixth West African country to record a case of Ebola when a two-year-old girl from Guinea died in October. It was close to being declared Ebola free in November before a second wave of infections.

It will be recalled that the World Health Organisation has announced that the three countries with the highest recorded Ebola epidemic have recorded their lowest weekly number of new cases for months.
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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Spread Of Virus Slowing Down In West Africa - UN

An outbreak of Ebola that has claimed more than 8,400 lives in West Africa appears to be slowing down, though the battle to contain the disease is not over, the U.N. special envoy on Ebola said on Thursday.
"The change in behavior that we've been hoping for, working for, anticipating, is now happening everywhere," Dr. David Nabarro told Reuters in an interview.

READ ALSO: EBOLA OUTBREAK: Sierra Leone Cemetries Full Of Children

"The facilities to treat people are available everywhere," he said. "Safe burial teams are providing safe and dignified burial services everywhere and the result is that we're seeing the beginnings of the outbreak slowing down."

Nabarro declined to predict when the outbreak of the virus could be definitively over.

The hemorrhagic fever is spread through contact with bodily fluids of infected people or the highly contagious body of someone who has died of the virus. Nabarro said burial practices that involved people touching and cleaning bodies of Ebola victims had helped fuel the outbreak.

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The worst Ebola outbreak on record infected about 21,200 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since it was detected in March, according to the World Health Organization.

The government of Liberia said earlier on Thursday that it could be free of the virus by the end of next month after success in curbing transmission. It said the country had only 10 confirmed Ebola cases as of Jan. 12.

"It's an incredible drop," Nabarro said, adding that he believed the Liberian figures were "absolutely correct." Nabarro described "a remarkable collective change in patterns of behavior" and said Liberia had "come to terms with the reality that the outbreak of Ebola is being driven by the way in which people behave."

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More than 3,500 of the 8,400 dead were from Liberia.

Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea now have capacity to quickly set up mobile centers to handle localized outbreaks.

"Those who are involved in the response have worked out that they can organize rapid mobile responses in case there's a flare up anywhere, so they can set up small temporary treatment facilities wherever they are needed," Nabarro said.

He said the U.S., British and French military, which built treatment centers, had played a crucial role.

"This external help was absolutely vital in bolstering and supporting the capacity of the people in the country to make the changes," Nabarro said, adding that "much of the external help came from within Africa."

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New 'Charlie Hebdo' Cover Continues To Roil Muslim World

The deadly attack on controversial Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo last week has served to heighten not just terrorism-related security issues but also the cavernous divide between some Muslims and the West.

While many Muslims have expressed outrage at the killing of 12 people, many of them cartoonists who had a hand in a series of drawings depicting the Prophet Mohammed, others chose to focus on what they consider to be theoffensive nature of the publication. In mainstream Islamic culture, showing the Prophet Mohammed in any form - even flattering - is considering blasphemy.

READ ALSO: EBOLA OUTBREAK: Sierra Leone Cemetries Full Of Children

That the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo chose to defiantly return to publication this week featuring a cover cartoon of the prophet - with the bubble Je suis Charlie, the rallying cry of Hebdo supporters - has led not only to violent protests but also injuries and deaths.

In Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, encounters between police and protesters gathered in front of the French embassy saw four shot, including two journalists. Pakistani lawmakers called the Hebdo cartoons hate speech; a parliamentary resolution noted that "freedom of expression should not be used as a means to attack or hurt public sentiments and religious beliefs."

In the West African nation of Niger, President Mahamadou Issoufou said at least 10 people have been killed after violent protests broke out against the latest cartoon depicting Mohammed in the French publication. Issoufou said that five deaths were reported after demonstrations in the capital of Niamey on Saturday. The victims were inside churches and bars that were set ablaze, he said. On Friday, at least five people were killed in the town of Zinder after prayer services there.

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Iranian judicial authorities on Saturday banned a daily newspaper for publishing a front-page headline that allegedly indicated support for Charlie Hebdo. Mohammad Ghoochani, chief editor of the daily Mardom-e-Emrooz, or Today's People, told the semi-official Tasnim news agency that his paper had been ordered closed. The paper's Tuesday edition featured a front-page article with a headline that quoted filmmaker and activist George Clooney as saying "I am Charlie Hebdo." However the accompanying article did not actually express support for Clooney's statement, nor for the magazine itself.

The Iranian government has publicly condemned both the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the magazine itself, calling the continued publishing of Mohammed caricatures "provocative" and an insult to Islam.

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Elsewhere in the Muslim world on Saturday, Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani condemned Charlie Hebdo, calling the newest cover image of Prophet Mohammed a blasphemous and irresponsible act.

"Freedom of expression should be used in a way to boost understanding between the religions," he said in a statement issued by the presidential palace. "Afghanistan has suffered many years of war and violence, more than any other country, and it is necessary to understand and promote peaceful coexistence among all the people of the world."

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also issued a statement of condemnation, warning that, "offensive words might lead to further bloodshed."

Al-Abadi called on all parties to "desist such practices that create an atmosphere of division and rejection." He also reiterated his condemnation of the attacks on innocent victims in Paris, saying that terrorism, "has nothing to do with Islam in any way."

Protesters also demonstrated in front of the French Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, as well as in the Pakistani city of Karachi. In Egypt, the Islamist Noor Party denounced the latest Charlie Hebdo cover on its French-language Facebook page. "Just as the Noor Party rejects the assault on civilians and the negative effects it has for all Muslims of Europe, it also rejects this barbaric, irresponsible act under the name of freedom of expression," the statement declared.

In Gaza City, the capital of the Gaza Strip, unknown vandals scrawled graffiti on the walls of the French Cultural Center. In addition to statements praising the Prophet Mohammed and declaring him off-limits for ridicule or satire, the vandals also wrote: "To hell, to a miserable destiny, French journalists."

Source: USATODAY

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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Sierra Leone Cemetries Full Of Children

Named after a long-forgotten tribal ruler of Sierra Leone, the King Tom cemetery hides behind flaking grey walls in the suburbs of northern Freetown.
For years, it has fought a losing battle for space with the neighbouring municipal refuse dump, from which piles of rubbish overflow on to the rows of overgrown headstones. Now, though, the tide is in reverse – as the cemetery overflows with the casualties of Sierra Leone's Ebola crisis.

When The Telegraph visited the cemetery last week, a procession of three burial workers picked their way through the graves, each with a tiny, knapsack-sized bag cradled in their arms. Edward Conteh, aged 3, Amna Kabbah Dumbaya, aged four months, and Mamayo Sesay, aged two weeks, were buried in a section specially set aside for children. It is also by far the fastest-growing section.

READ ALSO: EBOLA OUTBREAK: Red Cross Worker Dies in Sierra Leone
"There are a staggering number of children being buried here on a weekly basis," says Fiona Mclysaght, Country Director for Concern Worldwide, which is supervising the burial operation.

"Between the first and the fifth of January 156 children under the age of five were buried here in King Tom."
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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Red Cross Worker Dies in Sierra Leone

The Red Cross has lost its first worker to the Ebola virus, the organization said on Thursday, January 15.

The unidentified employee, a male nurse, is said to have succumbed to the disease on Tuesday, January 12, in Sierra Leone.

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The deceased worker is said to have worked at an Ebola treatment center in Kenema before his death.

The humanitarian organization is investigating how he came to be infected and 29 people who made contact with him are being monitored for symptoms.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has said that cases of Ebola are now on the decline in West Africa.
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EBOLA OUTBREAK: WHO Approves 2 Vaccines - Trials Begin Jan 2015

After an expert meeting last week, WHO said there is now enough information to conclude that the vaccines have “an acceptable safety profile.”

In a statement released last week, Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, Head of WHO’s Ebola vaccine efforts, said “the cupboard (for Ebola vaccines) is filling up rapidly.”

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She said further trials in healthy people in West Africa, including health workers, are scheduled to start later in January or early February. Several other vaccines were being developed in the U.S., Russia and elsewhere.

vaccine-EbolaDespite the temporary suspension of a trial of the vaccine made by NewLink and Merck in December, the trial was put on hold while experts investigated reports of joint pain in a number of participants. No such side effects have been reported with the other vaccine.

The next phase of trials will likely take about six months and manufacturers will ramp up their production at the same time, meaning millions of doses could be available later this year. It’s unclear if that will be quick enough to help slow the epidemic, which appears to be on the decline.

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So far, Ebola has sickened more than 20,000 people and killed over 8,000, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Officials estimate the death rate to be about 71 percent.

“We will have to take stock when we have the vaccines,” said Helen Rees of the University of Witwatersrand, who chaired the WHO meeting. She said experts would have to consider at that point whether it’s useful to vaccinate entire populations or focus only on high-risk groups.

GAVI, a private-public vaccine alliance, has pledged to spend $300 million on WHO-recommended Ebola vaccines, which it estimates could translate into 12 million doses.

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BOKO HARAM: Cameroon Military Kills 41 Insurgents

The Cameroonian army has killed 41 Boko Haram terrorists who entered into the country’s territory, the government has said.



The insurgents were said to have crossed the border between Nigeria and Cameroon and taken control of a military camp at Ashigashiya.

However, the terrorists were chased out by unprecedented air strikes carried out by Cameroonian troops.

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According to a statement released by the country’s Minister of Information, Issa Tchiroma in in Yaounde on December 29:

“Boko Haram’s campaign to carve out an Islamist caliphate has spread from its stronghold in North-East Nigeria to neighbouring Cameroon, raising fears for an already unstable region also threatened by Islamist militants in the Sahel.”
“Units of the Boko Haram group attacked Makari, Amchide, Limani and Achigachia in a change of strategy which consists of distracting Cameroonian troops on different fronts, making them more vulnerable in the face of the mobility and unpredictability of their attacks,” the statement added.
“No fewer than 34 militants were killed after the army laid siege to a base used by the militants in Chogori while seven others and one soldier were killed near the town of Waza,” Tchiroma said.
The spokesperson for the Cameroonian army, Lt.-Col. Didier Badjeck also confirmed the reports saying that the militants were repelled by the air strikes.
“All the militants had now pulled back into Nigeria,” Badjeck said.

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According to Tchiroma, the air strikes were personally ordered by Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya who had earlier vowed to wipe the sect out of the country.

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Search For Missing AirAsia Plane Resumes In Indonesia

Search and rescue operations have resumed for an AirAsia plane that went missing en route from Indonesia to Singapore. Relatives have been enduring a desperate wait, with the plane's disappearance shrouded in mystery.

Indonesia resumed its search at dawn on Monday for the AirAsia passenger jet that went missing above the Java Sea with 162 people on board.
First Admiral Sigit Setiayana, commander at Indonesia's Naval Aviation Center at the Surabaya air force base, told the AP news agency that visibility was good.

He said 12 navy ships, five planes, three helicopters and several warships were searching to the east and southeast of Belitung Island and in nearby waters. "God willing, we can find it soon," Setiayana said.

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The search and rescue operation had been suspended at nightfall on Sunday, with anxious relatives waiting throughout the night for further news.

Teams from Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia were involved in a Sunday search operation near the island, which lies close to the plane's last known whereabouts. Those efforts were halted because of a lack of light.

International offers of help

Australia, the United States, Britain, South Korea and India were said to have offered help, including search planes and navy ships, as well as experts and investigators.

AirAsia Flight QZ8501 last communicated with Indonesian air traffic control about 42 minutes after taking off from Indonesia's Surabaya airport at 5:20 a.m. local time (22:20 UTC) en route to Singapore, a flight that normally takes just over two hours.

According to the airline, Indonesian air traffic controllers lost contact with the Airbus A320-200 plane shortly after its pilots had requested permission to ascend by 6,000 feet to avoid bad weather - a standard maneuver in such circumstances.

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A weather forecaster at Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said dense storm clouds were detected at flying altitude in the area where the plane lost contact.

Majority of passengers Indonesian

The plane was carrying 162 people, 155 of whom were Indonesians. The airline said three South Koreans and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain were also onboard. A Frenchman was also working on the plane as co-pilot.

Sunday's incident comes in the wake of two major air disasters in the past 10 months, both of which struck another Asian carrier, Malaysia Airlines.

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Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Despite a massive search operation by several countries, the plane remains missing.

A second Malaysia Airlines flight, MH17, was shot down over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in mid-July. All 298 passengers and crew lost their lives.

AirAsia, a regional low-cost carrier founded in 2001, has never had a fatal accident.

rc/cmk (AP, Reuters, AFP, dpa)

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LOL!!! See How Georgian Lawmakers Boxed Themselves On Boxing Day

In keeping with the spirit of boxing day on Friday Dec. 26th, some Georgian lawmakers boxed themselves in the parliament over disagreement in the constitution of a delegation to go for an assignment. Some lawmakers ripped microphones off their tables and used them as weapons to fight their colleagues. Watch the brawl below>>>
        

READ ALSO: EBOLA OUTBREAK: Death Toll Reaches 7,693 - WHO

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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Death Toll Reaches 7,693 - WHO

As many as 19,695 are infected, WHO said on Friday, Itar-Tass reported. These cases were reported from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

The most serious situation is reported from Liberia, with 3,384 deaths. Sierra Leone has the biggest number of infected - 9,203. In Guinea, 1,654 deaths and 2,630 cases are registered.

The number of Ebola deaths in these three countries rose by 120 since December 24.

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The World Health Organization describes Ebola virus disease (formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever) as "a severe, often fatal illness, with a case fatality rate of up to 90%". Symptoms include sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding.

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The infection is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected animals or people. People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. The incubation period is 2 to 21 days. There is no known cure or vaccine for the disease. The only treatment offered is "supportive intensive care".

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North Korea Lambastes U.S Over Release Of 'The Interview', Calls Obama A Monkey

North Korea called President Barack Obama "a monkey" and blamed the U.S. on Saturday for shutting down its Internet amid the hacking row over the comedy "The Interview."

North Korea has denied involvement in a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures but has expressed fury over the comedy depicting an assassination of its leader Kim Jong Un. After Sony Pictures initially called off the release in a decision criticized by Obama, the movie has opened this week.

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On Saturday, the North's powerful National Defense Commission, the country's top governing body led by Kim, said that Obama was behind the release of "The Interview." It described the movie as illegal, dishonest and reactionary.

"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," an unidentified spokesman at the commission's Policy Department said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"If the U.S. is to persistently insist that the hacking attack was made by the DPRK, the U.S. should produce evidence without fail, though belatedly," the statement publish by KCNA said.

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He also accused Washington for intermittent outages of North Korea websites this week, after the U.S. had promised to respond to the Sony hack.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House on Saturday.

According to the North Korea commission's spokesman, "the U.S., a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing a tag."
The commission said the movie was the results of a hostile U.S. policy toward North Korea, and threatened the U.S. with unspecified consequences.

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North Korea and the U.S. remain technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The rivals also are locked in an international standoff over the North's nuclear and missile programs and its alleged human rights abuses. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against North Korean aggression.

Source: Associated Press

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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Careless Mistake At CDC Lab Leads To Fear Of Exposure

A laboratory mistake at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus, federal officials said Wednesday.

The technician will be monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the incubation period of the disease. A small number of other employees, fewer than a dozen, who entered a lab where the mistake occurred will also be assessed for exposure.

The error occurred Monday when a high-security lab at the CDC in Atlanta, working with Ebola virus from the epidemic in West Africa, sent samples that should have been inactivated to another CDC laboratory, which was down the hall. But the lab sent out the wrong samples — ones that had not been inactivated, and that may have contained the live virus. The second lab was not equipped to handle the live virus.

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The technician who worked with the samples wore gloves and a gown, but no mask, and may have been exposed. The error was discovered Tuesday.

The accident is especially troubling because dangerous samples of anthrax and flu were mishandled at the CDC in June, eroding confidence in an agency that has long been one of the most respected scientific research centers in the world. The CDC promised last summer to improve its safety procedures.

“I’m working on it until the issue is resolved,” the agency’s director, Thomas R. Frieden, said in an interview in July. Under harsh questioning from members of Congress that month, Dr. Frieden admitted that the errors at CDC labs had not been not isolated mishaps, but rather part of a broad pattern of unsafe practices. He called one of the episodes a “tipping point” that had forced agency officials to realize that they needed to take action.

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In the June incident, CDC scientists sent anthrax samples, supposedly killed, to laboratories unequipped to handle dangerous pathogens. But the bacteria turned out to be live because a deactivating technique too weak to wipe out anthrax spores had been used. Dozens of employees were offered antibiotics and anthrax vaccine; none became infected.

The head of the laboratory that shipped the bacteria resigned a few weeks after the mistakes came to light. Although CDC officials gave no reason for his resignation and said it was voluntary, they had previously indicated that they feared that laboratory workers had grown careless because of lax supervision.

In another blunder, a CDC lab accidentally contaminated a relatively benign flu sample with a dangerous H5N1 bird flu strain that can be fatal in humans, then shipped it to a Department of Agriculture lab. Scientists there detected the error, and no one was harmed.

Although the flu accident occurred in May, senior CDC officials were not told about it until July 7, and Dr. Frieden did not hear about it until two days after that. He said in an interview in July that he was “stunned and appalled” by the incident.

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The mistakes led the CDC to appoint a panel of outside safety experts in July to advise Dr. Frieden on how to correct sloppy procedures at government laboratories. The CDC temporarily closed its flu and bioterrorism laboratories and halted shipments of all infectious agents from its high-security labs until the labs could pass muster with a newly formed safety panel within the agency.

The special pathogens branch, where the Ebola accident occurred Monday, soon received permission to start sending out infectious agents again.

This latest accident is being investigated, said agency spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds. “We’ll learn from this mistake, as we’ve learned from the others,” she said.

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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Northern Sierra Leone Under Five Days LockDown

The Sierra Leone government on Wednesday declared a five-day lockdown in the country’s north to step up efforts to contain the Ebola epidemic, while making an exception for Christmas.

“Muslims and Christians are not allowed to hold services in mosques and churches throughout the lockdown except for Christians on Christmas Day (Thursday),” Alie Kamara, resident minister for the Northern Region, told AFP.

The lockdown is designed “to intensify the containment of the Ebola virus,” he said, adding: “We are working to break the chain of transmission.”

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Deputy communication minister Theo Nicol said “the lockdown for five days... is meant for us to get an accurate picture of the situation,” adding: “Other districts will carry on with their own individual lockdown after this if they deemed it necessary.”

Ebola has killed more than 7,500 people, almost all of them in west Africa. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea are the three countries worst-hit by the epidemic.

Sierra Leone overtook Liberia recently as the country with the highest number of Ebola infections.

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Kamara said shops and markets would be closed throughout the period, and “no unauthorised vehicles or motorcycle taxis” would be allowed to circulate “except those officially assigned to Ebola-related assignments.”

Among “key objectives” is to allow health workers to identify patients, Kamara said.

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Yet Another Black Teen, Antonio Martin, Shot Dead In St. Louis Suburb

An 18-year-old black teen, Antonio Martin was fatally shot by police at a gas station late on Tuesday in a St. Louis suburb, close to the place where unarmed teen – Michael Brown – was killed by a white officer in August, police and local media have said.

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St. Louis County Police Department spokesman Brian Schellman, in a statement disclosed that the police officer shot and killed Martin, who drew a handgun and pointed it at him as he approached him and another man at a gas station in the St. Louis-area suburb of Berkeley.

“Fearing for his life, the Berkeley Officer fired several shots, striking the subject, fatally wounding him,” he said.

However dozens of Twitter users claim Martin was unarmed when he was shot as several protesters have gathered at the scene, demanding that the police explain what happened.

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A man calling himself Jesus Christo on Twitter, told The Huffington Post that he and Martin were stopped by an officer who said they fit the descriptions of recent robbery suspects.
Christo, 18, declined to speak over the phone, but spoke through direct messages on Twitter.

According to him, the officer attempted to search Martin, who refused, Christo said.
“The officer then stepped back and drew his weapon and pointed at Antonio and told us to lay on the ground,” Christo said. “I layed down but Antonio refused.”

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the incident was followed by protesters clashing with police, at least three people have been arrested in the clashes.


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EBOLA OUTBREAK: Crisis Will Last Over A Year - WHO Chief

West Africa's Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015, says the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) body dealing with the epidemic.
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.

But he also warned that vaccines would take time to develop.

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The current Ebola outbreak, the deadliest to date, has so far killed more than 7,300 people.

Most of the victims have been in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Prof Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976, said that even though the outbreak has peaked in Liberia and was likely to peak in Sierra Leone in the next few weeks, the epidemic could have a "very long tail and a bumpy tail".

"The Ebola epidemic is still very much there. People are still dying, new cases are being detected," he told the BBC World Service's Newsday programme.

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"We need to be ready for a long effort, a sustained effort [for] probably the rest of 2015."

But he added that he was impressed by the progress that he had seen in Sierra Leone.

"Treatment centres have now been established across the country with British help. You don't see any longer the scenes where people are dying in the streets," he said.

He also said he was also encouraged that thanks to simple treatments such as intravenous fluids and antibiotics, mortality rates had fallen to as low as one in three.

"Getting it below that will require specific therapies that are now going to be tested," he said, adding that he hoped that within three months it would be clear which anti-viral therapies were effective.

Developing a vaccine would be more complicated, he said, but must be done "so that when there is another epidemic or maybe when this epidemic drags on for a long time, that we have that vaccine available".
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