Health - London

BBC                                                                                                   Jan. 5, 2015

The charity Save the Children has said "no stone will be left unturned" in its investigation into how a British nurse working at an Ebola treatment centre contracted the disease.

 Pauline Cafferkey was diagnosed after returning to Glasgow a week ago. She had been working with the charity in Kerrytown, Sierra Leone.

Ms Cafferkey is critically ill in a north London hospital after her condition worsened in recent days.

Save the Children's Sierra Leone Director Rob MacGillivray told the BBC the charity would carry out a special investigation over and above its routine reviews....

He said the investigation would look at how protective equipment is used, and at person-to-person contact both inside and outside the Kerrytown treatment centre where the nurse worked.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30677619

THE GUARDIAN  by Josh Halliday and Severin Carrell             Dec. 31, 2014
LONDON--Public HealthEngland has vowed to review its Ebola screening measures after they were branded “utterly illogical” by an NHS doctor who returned from Africa with the Scottish nurse who has contracted the virus.

Public Health England said it would review its procedures, but defended its guidance as being in line with other organisations who have sent volunteers to Ebola-affected countries. Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Rex

WHO ANNOUNCES  EBOLA VACCINE TRIALS WILL BE SPEEDED UP TO DECEMBER.
THREE RELATED STORIES.   (Scroll down)

REUTERS                                       OCT. 24

By Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland

GENEVA/LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Trials of Ebola vaccines could begin in West Africa in December, a month earlier than expected, and hundreds of thousands of doses should be available for use by the middle of next year, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Vaccines are being developed and made ready in record time by drugmakers working with regulators, the U.N. health agency said, but questions remain about their safety and efficacy which can only be settled by full clinical trials.

"Vaccine is not a magic bullet, but when ready they may be a good part of the effort to turn the tide against the epidemic," senior WHO official Marie-Paule Kieny told a news briefing after a meeting in Geneva of industry executives, global health experts, drug regulators and funders.

THE INDEPENDENT                                                  OCT. 18, 2014

LONDON ---Ebola is poised to become the “definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation", Oxfam has warned, with more troops, funding and medical aid urgently needed to tackle the outbreak.

In an "extremely rare" move, the charity is calling for military intervention to provide logistical support across West Africa.

It says the world has less than two months to counter the spread of the deadly virus, which means addressing a "crippling shortfall" in military personnel.

Oxfam’s call for more troops comes after UN chief Ban Ki-Moon criticised countries he said were able to provide financial support to the crisis for not doing so.
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