United Kingdom

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

UPDATE: Ebola Patient Is Moved to London, and 2 Others Are Tested in Britain

NEW YORK TIMES     by Alan Cowell                                                 Dec. 30, 2014

LONDON — A health worker who returned from West Africa and was found to have Ebola when she arrived home in Scotland was transferred on Tuesday to Britain’s designated treatment center for the disease in London. The authorities also reported that two more people were being tested for the virus.

Editorial urging U.S. academic medical centers to do more to fight Ebola
in West Africa

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE                            Dec. 24, 2014
By Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., Edward W. Campion, M.D., Eric J. Rubin. M.D., Ph.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Lindsey R. Baden, M.D.

... As the Ebola outbreak has burned its way deep into Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, in one of the worst acute public health crises in 50 years, our academic medical centers have sat largely on the sidelines.

...The leaders of academic medical centers that have put roadblocks in the path of those wishing to serve need to rethink their priorities. They should be making it easier, not harder, for altruistic physicians, nurses, and other health care providers to help care for the sick and control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. ... Something is wrong when some of the greatest health care centers in the world are not helping in the fight against this disastrously dangerous threat to human health. We ask the leaders of every medical center in the country to figure out how to make it possible for their staff, and even qualified trainees, to help on the ground in West Africa.

Read full editorial

THE GUARDIAN           by Sarah Boseley                                                                    Dec. 22, 2014

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Ebola patients at a treatment centre in Sierra Leone have been given a heart drug that is untested against the virus in animals and humans, a move that has been deemed reckless by one senior scientist and has prompted UK medical staff at the centre to leave.

                British health workers help an Ebola patient in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

A 14-strong team of British doctors, nurses and paramedics stopped working at the Lakka treatment centre in Freetown because of their concerns over what they considered the experimental and potentially dangerous use of the drug, and other safety issues.