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Ebola Death Rates Vary Widely by Age Group

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Young children who are infected with Ebola may be more likely to die from the virus than older children or adults who are infected, according to a new study.

 In the study, researchers examined Ebola cases in children younger than 16 during the current outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and compared them with adult cases. They found that the outbreak's death rate has been higher among younger children than among older children and adults.

The disease has killed about 90 percent of infected children under age 1, and about 80 percent of kids ages 1 to 4 who have been infected. Older children who have been infected with Ebola may have a much better chance of surviving....

"The very youngest of children — neonates  —appear to have the worst outcomes from Ebola," study co-author Dr. Robert Fowler, an associate professor of critical-care medicine at the University of Toronto, said in a statement. (Neonates, or newborns, are babies younger than 1 month.)

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Exposure Concerns Grow in Liberia After Diagnosis of First Ebola Case in Weeks

NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink                                                            March  25, 2015

Worries have widened in recent days over the number of people in Liberia who may have been exposed to the country’s first Ebola case in more than two weeks, a street vendor who lived in a one-bathroom house shared with 52 others in a Monrovia suburb and who had sold food at a school where more than 1,900 students are enrolled.

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Sex the Hidden Culprit: A New Dimension in Ebola Infections in Liberia

africansuntimes.com - by Mardia Stone, M.D. - March 23, 2015

On March 20th, a newly confirmed Ebola case was reported [in Liberia] . . . This time, sexual contact is presumed to be the hidden culprit in this new Ebola virus transmission, according to a statement from the Ministry of Information and case reports from the National Ebola Response Team.

The story goes like this. . . .

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(ALSO SEE RELATED INFORMATION HERE)

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The hunters breaking an Ebola ban on bushmeat

BBC News by Mark Doyle                                                            March 23, 2015

Kabala, Sierra Leone- Scientists believe bushmeat is the origin of the current Ebola outbreak. A year ago, Sierra Leone put a ban on bushmeat - but is it working?
                         Bats are known carriers of the Ebola virus - this hunter was pictured last year

I linked up with a group of traditional hunters who were demonstrating how the Ebola-inspired ban on bushmeat hunting in Sierra Leone isn't working.

The ban came into force last year.

The Minister for Agriculture, Joseph Sam Sesay, confirmed to me that the ban was still in place and said it was broadly working.

But in the Wara Wara mountain range, the bushmeat hunters I met were obviously active.

Read complete story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31985826

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Mistakes That Fueled Ebola Spread Are Preventing Its Containment One Year Later

REUTERS by Emma Farge                                             March 23, 2015

DAKAR, March 23 -- Lapses that fueled the Ebola outbreak after it was first discovered a year ago are dogging the final stages of the fight against the virus as fatigue and complacency set in, delaying the end of the deadly epidemic.

A man is sprayed with disinfectant after he celebrated the memory of a loved one who died due to the Ebola virus at a newly build grave yard for Ebola virus victims in Monrovia, Liberia, Wednesday, March 11, 2015. Liberians held a church service Wednesday for families who lost members to Ebola to mark the country’s 99th celebration National Decoration Day, a holiday normally set aside for people to clean up and re-decorate the graves of their lost relatives. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh) | ASSOCIATED PRESS

Three doctors were discovered to be infected with Ebola at a hospital in Guinea's capital Conakry last week in what health reports and government officials blamed on a failure to implement basic measures for infection control.

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Nearly All Fuel in Fukushima Reactor Has Melted, Says TEPCO

tepco.co.jp - AFP - yahoo.com
March 19, 2015

CLICK HERE - Reactor imaging technology for fuel debris detection by cosmic ray muon
(13 page .PDF report)
Measurement status report in Unit-1
March 19, 2015
Tokyo Electric Power Company

CLICK HERE - TEPCO - Handouts at press conference

New tests show almost all of the fuel inside one of the Fukushima plant's reactors has melted, its operator said Thursday, the latest step in the clean up after Japan's worst ever nuclear crisis.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the technology, which uses elementary particles called "muon" to create x-ray style images, gave the most concrete evidence yet the fuel had dropped to the bottom of the first reactor.

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UN Warns World Could Have 40 Percent Water Shortfall by 2030

CLICK HERE - The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

CLICK HERE - REPORT - The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015 (139 page .PDF report)

phys.org - by Hillel Italie - March 20, 2015

The world could suffer a 40 percent shortfall in water in just 15 years unless countries dramatically change their use of the resource, a U.N. report warned Friday.

The report predicts global water demand will increase 55 percent by 2050, while reserves dwindle. If current usage trends don't change, the world will have only 60 percent of the water it needs in 2030, it said.

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Congressional Forum - “Building Resilient Communities: Ebola and Global Health Crises – Where We Need to Go”

Dr. David Nabarro - Congressional Forum

upmchealthsecurity.org

CLICK HERE -Agenda

CLICK HERE -Photos

CLICK HERE - Videos

On February 25, 2015 a Congressional Forum was convened.

Objectives:

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Liberia Reports First Ebola Case in Weeks

         

A man walks by a mural with health instructions on treating the Ebola virus, in Monrovia, November 18, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/James Giahyue

reuters.com - (Reporting by James Harding Giahyue; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
March 20, 2015

(Reuters) - Liberia has reported its first Ebola case in weeks on Friday, health officials said, in a setback for its efforts to stamp out the worst recorded epidemic of the deadly virus.

A government official, who asked not to be named, said the patient came from Caldwell, a suburb of the capital not far from the last cluster of cases in the St Paul's Bridge neighborhood. . .

. . . "Today, a patient tested positive of Ebola at the transit center run by Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Liberia's Ministry of Health's Redemption Hospital," said Adolphus Mawolo, spokesman for MSF in Monrovia.

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Emails: UN health agency resisted declaring Ebola emergency

ASSOCIATED PRESS   by   Maria Cheng and Raphael Satter                                        March 20, 2015

GENEVA  — In a delay that some say may have cost lives, the World Health Organization resisted calling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency until last summer, two months after staff raised the possibility and long after a senior manager called for a drastic change in strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

Among the reasons the United Nations agency cited in internal deliberations: worries that declaring such an emergency — akin to an international SOS — could anger the African countries involved, hurt their economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Those arguments struck critics, experts and several former WHO staff as wrong-headed.

"That's like saying you don't want to call the fire department because you're afraid the fire trucks will create a disturbance in the neighborhood," said Michael Osterholm, a prominent infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.

In public comments, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan has repeatedly said the epidemic caught the world by surprise.

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