UNMEER [UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response] @UNMEER #EbolaResponse
UNMEER’s website is aggregating and presenting content from various sources including its own External Situation Reports, press releases, statements and what it titles “developments.” We present a composite below from the week ending 8 November 2014.

UNMEER External Situation Reports
UNMEER External Situation Reports are issued daily (excepting Saturday) with content organized under these headings:
– Highlights
– Key Political and Economic Developments
– Human Rights
– Medical
– Logistics
– Outreach and Education
– Resource Mobilisation
– Essential Services
– Upcoming Events
The “Week in Review” will present highly-selected elements of interest from these reports. The full daily report is available as a pdf using the link provided by the report date.

7 November 2014
Highlights
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. UN Special Envoy on Ebola Dr. David Nabarro said the extraordinary global response over the past month has made him hopeful the outbreak could end in 2015, though he cautioned that the fight to contain the disease is not even a quarter done. In the past four weeks, the rate of EVD infections seems to be slowing in some parts of West Africa, he said. In other hotspots it appears to be expanding the way it was a month ago. Nabarro said there are five times more beds for treatment in the three most affected countries than there were two months ago, which is helping to reduce the number of cases, along with improving efforts to find infected people and trace their contacts. Nabarro pointed to two other positive signs: the extraordinary global response in the last month and the mobilization of local communities in the three countries as a result of massive media campaigns and house-to-house “sensitization efforts” involving traditional leaders.
Response Efforts and Health
5. The EVD outbreak has likely killed far more people than the 4,828 deaths reported by the World Health Organization, WHO’s strategy chief Christopher Dye said Thursday, warning that thousands of fatalities were likely not accounted for. The likely explanation is that many people are burying the dead in secret, possibly to avoid having authorities interfere with burial customs like washing and touching the deceased, which is widely blamed for much of the transmission. The fact that WHO-reported numbers of cases and deaths are lower now than they were last week is due a different, more consistent manner of counting, Mr. Dye said. It does not imply a slowing down of the disease.
8. As part of the Rapid Response Team, UNICEF recently conducted rapid assessments of “hot spots” in Liberia – namely Grand Kru, Grand Bassa, Sinoe and Grand Cape Mount counties – focused on how to rapidly isolate and treat patients with symptoms of Ebola following clear infection control standards. The process involves working with County Health Teams, communities and partners to design local solutions including the setup of Community Care Centers, providing technical assistance on water, sanitation and hygiene management, and advising on how to engage communities. Additional assessments in Gbarpolu and Bomi are underway.
Essential Services
16. Sierra Leone’s Deputy Health Minister Madina Radman said the country’s failure to clearly separate its EVD treatment units from regular health facilities had destroyed confidence in hospitals and clinics. “We are struggling to regain confidence in our health facilities because of this mistake”, she said. “About 50 per cent of the deaths in the country are not Ebola but, because people fear to come to some of our healthcare facilities, they die needlessly due to other treatable diseases.”
17. According to analysis by the ngo Action Contre la Faim and the University of Naples Federico II, in 2015 the EVD crisis will lead to an increase of people suffering from undernourishment in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. 5,3 to 5,7 million people are expected be undernourished in 2015 in the 3 most affected countries, compared to 5 million before the start of the epidemic.

6 November 2014
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, announced a package of at least 450 million USD in commercial financing that will enable trade, investment, and employment in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The private sector initiative will include 250 million USD in rapid response projects, and at least 200 million USD in investment projects to support post-epidemic economic recovery. It is part of the World Bank Group’s effort to support the most affected countries during the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic and prepare them for economic recovery.
3. The Obama administration will ask the US Congress for about 6.2 billion USD in emergency funding to combat the spread of EVD in West Africa and reduce risks for U.S. citizens. According to a statement from the US Office of Management and Budget, the money would be used to strengthen domestic public health systems, contain and mitigate the outbreak in West Africa, and speed up efforts to obtain vaccines. The request seeks 2.4 billion USD for domestic public health services. Another 2.1 billion USD is for the US State Department and its Agency for International Development, 112 million USD for the Pentagon and 1.5 billion USD to be put in a contingency fund.
Human Rights
7. Sierra Leone said Wednesday it was holding a journalist in a maximum security prison after a guest on his radio show criticised President Ernest Bai Koroma’s handling of the Ebola outbreak. David Tam Baryoh, host of the weekly “Monologue” programme on the private radio station Citizen FM, was arrested on Tuesday and sent to Freetown’s Pademba Road jail. Baryoh had interviewed an opposition party spokesman who criticised Koroma and his government’s handling of the Ebola outbreak.
Response Efforts and Health
9. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the lead agency managing burials and cremations, estimates that of all EVD deaths, 87% (4,404 of 5,060 cumulative deaths) have been managed by a trained burial or cremation team. A limitation of this estimation is that a significant number of deaths and burials are not reported, and that is does not yet include burials managed by other organizations. WHO estimates there is a need for 528 trained burial teams in the three affected countries. Currently 140 trained teams are on the ground.

5 November 2014
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Tuesday urged Asian countries to send trained health workers to the West African countries hit by Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), warning the focus on stricter border control was not the solution. He welcomed efforts by South Korea, China and Japan to send medical personnel or equipment to combat the outbreak. Asia must send more medical teams to the three affected countries, he said, adding that just 30 medical teams from around the world have gone to assist in the countries so far.
4. Residents in Wonkifong, Guinea, approximately 90 km from Conakry demonstrated yesterday against the establishment of a new EVD treatment unit in their locality; security forces intervened to restore calm. Negotiations are underway to resolve the situation.
Response Efforts and Health
7. Australia is contracting a private company to staff and operate an EVD treatment unit in Sierra Leone, Prime Minister Tony Abbot has said. He said Australia would commit 17m USD to a 100-bed treatment unit being built by the UK. But he ruled out sending government health workers – most workers would be hired locally with international staff likely to include some Australians.
10. As of last week, 110 UNICEF-supported social and mental health workers had provided psychosocial, family tracing, reunification and reintegration support to 817 children affected by EVD in Liberia’s ten most affected counties. In addition, UNICEF is working with the Liberian government to train EVD survivors to care for these children and be engaged in community mobilization activities.
Essential Services
18. FAO, WFP, governments and other partners are currently carrying out a Crops and Food security Assessment Mission (CFSAM) based on rapid joint assessments in the field in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The mission will provide an analysis of the agricultural production, prices, markets, trades and stocks situation. The first outcomes should be available before 18 November 2014.

4 November 2014
Key Political and Economic Developments
4. Dr. Peter Salama, Global Ebola Emergency Coordinator for UNICEF, told reporters at UN Headquarters that the agency will be doubling its staff from 300 to 600 in the three most-affected countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – where children account for one-fifth of all Ebola cases. Dr. Salama also said an estimated 5 million children are affected and some 4,000 children have become orphaned from the current epidemic. UNICEF is reaching out to EVD survivors who are often willing to work on the frontlines of the disease response at the community level in local care centers with community health workers.
Human Rights
6. In Dandayah, in the Forécariah prefecture of Guinea, a group of contact tracers was chased away by residents under threat of death, despite appeals for calm by several officials including the mayor.
Resource Mobilisation
1. The African Union (AU) is seeking funding from some of the continent’s richest people, including several billionaires, to pay the costs for volunteer doctors and nurses fighting EVD in West Africa, it said yesterday. The bloc is seeking to raise $35 million in the first round and eventually as much as $100m for the Business-to-Rescue Fund. A separate campaign to ask for contributions from citizens will follow.
Essential Services
11. The peak season for Lassa fever in West Africa is about to begin. The virus has been largely forgotten in the EVD crisis, and health workers are warning that they may not have the resources to deal with the disease if cases increase. The symptoms of Lassa are largely identical to EVD, posing an extra problem. All of the countries worst hit by EVD are home to Lassa fever.

3 November 2014
Human Rights
6. According to a survey by UNICEF, 96 percent of Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone have experienced some sort of discrimination. More than three-quarters of respondents told UNICEF they would not welcome back an Ebola survivor into their community.
Essential Services
20. Women are no longer giving birth in health facilities due to EVD. Contraception distributions have also dropped by 70 per cent leading to fears of a high rate of new teenage pregnancies and a doubling of severe acute malnutrition of children under five with mothers struggling to earn money for food. Indeed, new data on severe acute malnutrition admissions in Liberia for the month of September 2014 revealed that a total of 325 severely malnourished children under the age of five were admitted to UNICEF-supported integrated management of acute malnutrition treatment sites.
21. MSF has begun distributing antimalarial medicines in Monrovia, Liberia, a crucial medical
intervention in a city where the basic health care system has collapsed in recent months. Malaria is endemic in Liberia but due to the incredible demand of the EVD outbreak on the medical system, basic health care such as malaria treatment is now very difficult to find in Monrovia. MSF’s program will prevent new malaria cases and minimize the number of people with malaria at EVD treatment units. US philanthropist Bill Gates on Sunday announced he will donate over USD 500 million to fight malaria.

2 November 2014 | Weekly Situational Analysis
6. EVD survivors and health workers in the affected countries regularly report being shunned by their communities. While some EVD survivors have been branded as witches for surviving the disease, members of burial teams have faced calls for eviction from their homes. The latter is all the more worrying as a study by the Yale School of Public Health this week found that the greatest impact in terms of the EVD response would come from ensuring safe burials: if transmission via burial practices were eliminated, it is assessed that the secondary infection rate would drop below one per EVD case.

UNMEER site: Press Releases
:: WFP Continues Scaling Up Ebola Response With Partners:“Together We Must Do More” (6 November 2014)