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 22 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
– Response Efforts and Health
– 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.

21 November 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. UNMEER SRSG Anthony Banbury, accompanied by WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward, visited Mali in the past two days. The country is working hard to contain the spread of EVD after an imam infected with the virus travelled from Guinea to its capital Bamako. In Mali, the SRSG met the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the health minister, and the national EVD response coordinator, offering UNMEER’s support in containing the virus while it is still in its early stages. The president and the SRSG agreed that Mali could benefit from the lessons learned in the three most affected countries, and that there was a chance to contain the virus if all involved acted fast. In Mali the SRSG also met with representatives of UN organizations and implementing partners.
2. Liberia will see its economy shrink by 0.4 percent this year, and 2015 could be even worse, its finance minister said on Thursday. The finance ministry had earlier projected growth of 5.9 percent this year. But that was before EVD struck the country, crippling agriculture and Liberia’s fast-growing mining sector in particular.
Response Efforts and Health
4. The spread of EVD remains intense in most of Sierra Leone even as things have improved somewhat in the two other countries hardest hit. Some 168 new confirmed cases emerged in a single week in Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown recently, according to a WHO report. The report released late Wednesday indicated that Sierra Leone had the lowest percentage of EVD patients who had been isolated, only 13 percent. By comparison, that figure was 72 percent in Guinea. Health officials are aiming to isolate at least 70 percent of the sick, a target UNMEER ECM Amadu Kamara acknowledged was still far out of reach: “Progress is slow and we are falling short, and we need to accelerate our efforts”.
5. France announced that it would deploy troops to Guinea to assist in the EVD response effort. France would also support the establishment of 3 additional Ebola treatment centers (ETCs) in Guinea in collaboration with partners Médecins sans frontières, Médecins du monde and the French Red Cross…
Resource Mobilisation
11. The OCHA Ebola Virus Outbreak Overview of Needs and Requirements, now totaling US$ 1.5 billion, has been funded for $ 740 million, which is around 49 per cent of the total ask.
Essential Services
18. In Liberia, self-quarantined Gleyansiasu Town in Gbarpolu county has reported ongoing food shortage and lack of some basic medical supplies. The County Task Force noted that the shortage was due to the bad condition of the access roads and the inaccessibility to the area.

20 November 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. The World Bank now expects the impact of the EVD epidemic on Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy to be around US$ 3-4 billion, well below a previously outlined worst-case scenario of $ 32 billion. The risk of the highest case of economic impact of EVD has been reduced because of the success of containment in some countries, the bank said. In a report in October, the World Bank had said that if the virus spread significantly outside the three affected countries, this could potentially cost Africa tens of billions of dollars in disrupted cross-border trade, supply chains and tourism.
2. The UN called Wednesday for an end to defecation in the open, with fears growing that it has helped spread EVD in West Africa. Half the population of Liberia, the country worst hit by the epidemic, have no access to toilets, while in Sierra Leone nearly a third of people live without latrines. Nearly a billion people worldwide are forced to go to the toilet in the open. But the health risks of the practice are not confined to EVD. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the UN said a quarter of the population defecate outside, diarrhoea is the third biggest killer of children under five years old.
Human Rights
3. UNDP is working with Prisons Watch Sierra Leone, a local human rights NGO, to decongest prisons by speeding up legal processes, reducing the risk of EVD spreading there. Many inmates are without files or are detained for minor offences and remain unassisted. People represented include those who cannot afford a lawyer but face long detention if not assisted through the system. The initiative, which started in mid-October, led to the identification of 540 cases and discharge of 154 people.
Response Efforts and Health
6. UNMEER Liberia will lead on a Greater Monrovia Urban Operational Plan, which was adopted yesterday. Greater Monrovia represents over 50% of the EVD caseload and a wide variety of communities, originating from all over Liberia, and even the wider region. The virus keeps being imported and exported out of the capital and partners are in agreement that the virus needs to be ‘hunted down’ in the city to make national success a possibility. This requires a more focused and flexible approach, tailored to the specific challenges of the city, on which UNMEER will lead.
Essential Services
16. In Sierra Leone, UNDP has facilitated the first bi-monthly government payment to 20,000 EVD Response Workers (ERW) countrywide. UNDP is helping to address delays in payments and put in place a grievance mechanism/complaints resolution system. The process involves verifying government lists and matching them with individual IDs on the ground, as well as documenting grievances, requests and discrepancies. This payment system will also be used, over time, to support survivors and families of Ebola victims so they can recover from the crisis.
17. The World Bank says the impact of EVD on the three most affected economies has already been severe, hitting everything from food output to employment levels. In Liberia, nearly half of those working when the outbreak was first detected in March no longer have jobs as of early November, according to a World Bank report on Wednesday, based on surveys carried out via mobile phones. More than 90 percent of those surveyed in Liberia worried that their household would not have enough to eat.

19 November 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
2. India has quarantined a man who was cured of EVD in Liberia but continued to show traces of the virus in samples of his semen after arriving in the country. The Indian man carried with him documents from Liberia that stated he had been cured. He will be kept in quarantine until the virus is no longer present in his body, the Indian health ministry said.
3. Sierra Leone’s president has suspended his uncle from a prestigious position as a tribal chief for flouting laws designed to contain EVD. The uncle, head of the northern village of Yeli Sanda, is accused of covering up secret burials of victims who should have been reported to the authorities.
Human Rights
4. Guinea’s Ministry of Justice said its investigation into the September killings of EVD health workers and a journalist in a southeastern village is moving swiftly, with a trial expected by year’s end. The team of health workers and a journalist were attacked in Wome as they traveled through the southeast to raise awareness about the virus. Justice Minister Cheick Sakho said that authorities are working swiftly on the legal case against those responsible for the murders. Sakho said 81 people have been indicted so far, and 39 are in custody. Police have 40 more arrest warrants to execute.
Response Efforts and Health
6. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it will be supporting efforts to scale up the production and evaluation of convalescent plasma and other convalescent blood products as potential therapies for people infected with EVD. Various drugs will also be evaluated, including the experimental antiviral drug brincidofovir. The foundation has committed US$ 5.7 million to the effort, and specific trials will be confirmed in coordination with national health authorities and WHO.
Resource Mobilisation
16. The World Bank announced a US$ 285 million grant to finance EVD containment efforts underway in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as to help communities in the three countries cope with the socioeconomic impact of the crisis and rebuild and strengthen essential health services. The grant is part of the nearly US$ 1 billion previously announced by the World Bank for the countries hardest hit by EVD. The grant provides additional financing to the bank’s Ebola Emergency Response Project, including US$ 72 million for Guinea, US$ 115 million for Liberia and US$ 98 million for Sierra Leone, the three countries most affected by EVD.

18 November 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. The US added Mali to the list of countries whose travelers face special EVD screening on arrival, along with Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three most affected countries in the outbreak. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security announced the provision, for roughly 15 daily arrivals out of Mali, saying that there have been a number of confirmed cases of EVD in Mali in recent days, and a large number of individuals may have been exposed to those cases. There are no direct flights from Mali to the US.
3. The EU on Monday announced € 12 million (US$ 15 million) in funding for Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast “to help them prepare for the risk of an Ebola outbreak through early detection and public awareness measures”. The funding was part of a new € 29 million package for West Africa as a whole, which comes on top of the € 1 billion previously announced by the EU and its member states. The remainder of the funding will go to transporting aid and equipment to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and for evacuating infected international aid workers to hospitals in Europe.
Essential Services
16. With implementing partners, UNICEF supports the identification of children with severe acute malnutrition at the community level in five districts in Sierra Leone (Bombali, Kambia, Kono, Moyamba, and Port Loko). Last week, 1,099 children were screened and referred for treatment, of which 662 were severely malnourished and 437 were moderately malnourished.

17 November 2014
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. Liberia has set a goal of having no new cases of EVD by December 25, president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in a radio address on Sunday, another sign that authorities believe they are getting on top of the virus. “We continue to combat the Ebola virus and strive to achieve our national objective of zero new cases by Christmas,” Sirleaf said. She also announced a cabinet reshuffle, naming George Werner to replace Walter Gwenigale as health minister, a key position given the epidemic.
6. In a meeting in Monrovia on 14 November, UNMEER ECM Peter Graaff and WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward agreed with partners that the overall response to the EVD epidemic needs to be revised: the EVD response has to become more county-focused, with strong emphasis on active case finding and contact tracing.
Response Efforts and Health
8. WHO has begun assessing more than 120 potential treatments for EVD patients but so far has found none that definitely work, and some that definitely do not. The apparent effect of ZMapp and other drugs may be a result of the care the patients received, or the fact that they were well-nourished before falling ill, or of other medicines. Because many patients received multiple drugs, it is impossible to conclude which drugs work. Among treatments touted in the three affected countries are silver, selenium, green tea and Nescafé. WHO aims to provide clarity by pooling knowledge about all potential treatments and educate people on which ones should definitely be ruled out.
10. A Chinese deployment of 160 health workers arrived in Liberia on Sunday. The Chinese doctors, epidemiologists and nurses will staff a US$ 41 million Ebola treatment unit which is being built and will be up and running in 10 days. The health workers have had previous experience in tackling SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in Asia.
Outreach and Education
19. With UNICEF support, over 1.5 million subscribers of three leading mobile networks were reached through SMS messaging across Sierra Leone since mid-October. In addition, the president called on all 149 paramount chiefs to lead social mobilization activities in their respective chiefdoms.
Essential Services
20. The preliminary results of a nation-wide assessment in Sierra Leone conducted by FAO in partnership with the government and the Food Security Cluster, revealed that the EVD outbreak has caused shortage of labour for weeding, harvesting and other crucial activities. Disruption and closure of periodic markets has caused significant changes in prices of commodities. Urgent measures are needed to address the current food security gaps and rehabilitate key agricultural markets.

UNMEER site: Press Releases
Ebola: ‘We are seeing the curve bending in enough places to give us hope,’ says Ban
21 November 2014 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said that by continuing to scale up the global fight against Ebola, there is hope the outbreak could be contained by mid-2015, but he emphasized that results to date are still uneven, and announced that the Organization’s top health officials will head to Mali, where the situation is still a cause of “deep concern.”

Ban to take up fight against Ebola with heads of all UN organizations
20 November 2014 On the eve of a meeting of United Nations agency chiefs to discuss ways to jointly tackle the Ebola outbreak, the World Bank reported today Liberia’s labour sector has suffered a huge blow since the start of the crisis, as a “massive effort” was underway in Mali to halt the spread of the re-emerged virus.

Ebola cases no longer rising in Guinea, Liberia, UN health agency reports
19 November 2014 The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported today that the number of Ebola cases is “no longer increasing nationally in Guinea and Liberia, but is still increasing in Sierra Leone”, and that preparedness teams have been sent this week to Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia and Senegal.

‘Insecurity on the march again’ in Africa’s Sahel region, UN relief official warns
19 November 2014 Insecurity is on the march again in the countries of Africa’s Sahel belt, where extremists have displaced 1.5 million people in Nigeria and the threat of Ebola is exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis, the United Nations humanitarian regional coordinator said today.

Efforts by UN health agency under way to step up Ebola response in Mali
18 November 2014 The United Nations is intensifying its efforts to keep the Ebola outbreak from spreading in Mali by working to identify all chains of transmission and stepping up social mobilization campaigns to include a range of actors, from religious leaders to truck and bus drivers.