UK - London

REUTERS   by Kate Kell and Ben Herschler                                                                        Feb. 1. 2015
LONDON --As West Africa's devastating Ebola outbreak begins to dwindle, scientists are looking beyond the endgame at the kind of next-generation vaccines needed for a vital stockpile to hit another epidemic hard and fast.

Determined not to lose scientific momentum that could make the world's first effective Ebola interventions a reality, researchers say the shots, as well as being proven to work, must be cheap, easy to handle in Africa and able to hit multiple virus strains.

That may mean shifting focus from the stripped-down, fast-tracked vaccine development ideas that have dominated the past six months, but it mustn't mean the field gets bogged down in complexities.

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REUTERS     by Ben Hirschler                              Jan. 6, 2015
LONDON --Johnson & Johnson has started clinical trials of its experimental Ebola vaccine, which uses a booster from Denmark's Bavarian Nordic, making it the third such shot to enter human testing.

The initiation of the Phase I study in Britain, which had been expected about now, marks further progress in the race to develop a vaccine against a disease that has killed more than 8,000 people in West Africa since last year.

Two other experimental vaccines, one from GlaxoSmithKline and a rival from NewLink and Merck, are already in clinical development. However, the J&J vaccine offers a different approach, since it involves two separate injections.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/06/us-health-ebola-vaccine-j-j-idUSKBN0KF0HH20150106

THE INDEPENDENT by Kashmira    Gander            Jan. 1, 2015

Pauline Cafferkey, the British nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, is entering a “critical” stage of her recovery.

Dr Michael Jacobs said Ms Cafferkey was being treated with convalescent plasma taken from the blood of a recovered patient and an experimental anti-viral drug which is “not proven to work”.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ebola-in-the-uk-infected-nurse-pauline-cafferkey-in-critical-stage-of-treatment-9952904.html

Volunteers’ anger at restrictions imposed on their return home from west Africa

THE GUARDIAN by Tracy Mcveigh                                                                                   Dec. 21, 2014

As the latest of the six British-built Ebola treatment centres in west Africa admitted its first three patients this weekend, some of the volunteer NHS staff working there over Christmas said they felt insulted by a draconian ramping up of the protocols they have been told they will have to follow when they return to the UK.

A British health worker puts on protective clothes at a Red Cross clinic in eastern Sierra Leone. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters