Ebola/EVD: Additional Coverage

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 13 December 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.

12 December 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday announced the appointment of Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed of Mauritania as his new Special Representative and Head of UNMEER. Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed will succeed Anthony Banbury, who will return to New York in early January 2015. The Secretary-General expressed his gratitude to Mr. Banbury for his vision and leadership of UNMEER, and for his commitment to fighting this unprecedented EVD outbreak. Bringing more than 28 years of development and humanitarian assistance experience with the United Nations in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed is currently Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Deputy Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), United Nations Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative. He served as Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Syria (2008-2012) and Yemen (2012-2014).
2. The Red Cross warned on Thursday of a possible rise in the rate of EVD infections in West Africa as people travel across the region during the festive holidays. Urging people to take extra care to limit the spread of the virus, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Secretary General Elhadj As Sy said increasing rates were not inevitable but were a real risk. “Now is the time to be even more vigilant,” he told an audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. “We all welcome the plateauing and the signs of declines we are seeing in some places, but that should not be a reason for complacency.”
Response Efforts and Health
5. The Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) and UNDP visited eleven out of the fifteen counties to verify, and in some cases create, lists of Ebola response workers that are still to be paid. The MOHSW committed to paying eight of the counties this week for three months back-dated pay, though payments are yet to be verified with the Ministry of Finance. Challenges to making payments continue to emerge, including that in several counties individuals refuse to open bank accounts because they have never had bank accounts before and are not comfortable opening one for the first time.
Resource Mobilisation
11. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has granted US$ 35 million to fight EVD, the Islamic Development Bank said Thursday. The grant will provide schools and airports in West Africa with heat sensors and medical equipment to help prevent and treat the illness, Ahmed Mohamed Ali, president of the Jeddah-based IDB, said in a statement. The funds will also help to establish specialized treatment centers in the most affected countries — Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
12. The OCHA Ebola Virus Outbreak Overview of Needs and Requirements, now totaling US$ 1.5 billion, has been funded for $ 1.05 billion, which is around 70 percent of the total ask.
13. The Ebola Response Multi-Partner Trust Fund currently has US$ 108.2 million in commitments. In total $ 131 million has been pledged.
Outreach and Education
15. According to WHO, on 9 December there were a total of 21 sub-prefectures across Guinea where EVD response efforts are facing community resistance. These sub-prefectures are located in the three main areas affected by the epidemic: the Forest Region; central-northern Guinea and Conakry and adjacent prefectures. Resistance is often due to insufficient sensitization, lack of trust stemming from the non-delivery on promises by EVD responders (such as ambulance transportation or kit distribution) and the fact that many patients admitted to the ETCs are not surviving. The National Ebola Response Cell (NERC), with UNMEER support, is taking action to resolve bottlenecks in the delivery of hygiene and supply kits and the establishment of Community Watch Committees which are critical to stop transmission and lift resistance.

11 December 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
2. US magazine TIME has declared the Ebola fighters their “Person of the Year 2014”. In explaining its choice, the magazine noted: “The rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and women are willing to stand and fight. For tireless acts of courage and mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and saving, the Ebola fighters are TIME’s 2014 Person of the Year.” The magazine also notes the importance of learning from this outbreak, to strengthen healthcare and response services and be better prepared in future.
Response Efforts and Health
4. Sierra Leonean authorities have imposed a two-week lockdown in Kono district, where a major EVD flare-up has gone largely unreported until now. Although rapid reaction has helped contain the virus to about half of the 15 chiefdoms in Kono, WHO teams that arrived in the area 10 days ago were taken aback at the situation they encountered. In the space of 11 days, two WHO teams buried 87 victims, including a nurse and an ambulance driver enlisted to help dispose of corpses piling up in the local hospital. 25 people had died in a hastily cordoned off section of the hospital in the five days before the team arrived. “We are only seeing the ears of the hippo,” said Dr. Amara Jambai, Sierra Leone’s Director of Disease Prevention and Control, expressing concern that the official figures underrepresent the size of the outbreak in Kono district.
5. UNDP has completed 2 prison isolation units for incoming prisoners in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The two facilities will serve as observation centers for new inmates (male and female separately) in Freetown’s correctional centers, to help prevent an outbreak among the prison population. The units will open officially on Friday 12 December. Further, UNDP is scaling up a nationwide prison sensitization and equipment campaign to improve conditions and strengthen protection against the spread of EVD inside detention facilities.

10 December 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. The government of Liberia, with the support of UNMEER and regional participation from Sierra Leone, Guinea, Mali and Nigeria, organized a technical meeting on cross-border coordination on the prevention and control of EVD. In her opening statement, President Johnson Sirleaf emphasized the need to pool shared regional resources to counter EVD across the whole region. She also mentioned the cross-country coordination of specialized national institutions and the need for ease of access to resources available in border areas, as well as managing the porous borders. UNMEER SRSG Banbury stated the clear commitment of the UN to support the regional counter-EVD initiatives. A Strategic Framework for Cross-Border Collaboration on EVD Prevention and Control was elaborated at the meeting.
2. More foreign health workers are needed to help tackle the epidemic, which is spreading quickly in western Sierra Leone and deep in the forested interior of Guinea, Special Envoy Nabarro said in Geneva on Tuesday, adding that the outbreak is still flaming strongly in western Sierra Leone and some parts of the interior of Guinea. “We don’t yet have the full number of functioning treatment centers and places where people who are ill can be kept away from others,” he said. Dr. Nabarro expressed confidence that there will be an improvement in Freetown in the next few weeks. The rise in the spread of EVD in western Sierra Leone reflects the fact that tribal-led communities have yet to fully accept the outbreak and take action to avoid infection, he said.
3. EVD is still “running ahead” of efforts to contain it, WHO Director General Margaret Chan said, warning against complacency. The risk to the world “is always there” while the outbreak continues, Dr. Chan said. “It’s not as bad as it was in September. But going forward we are now hunting the virus, chasing after the virus. Hopefully we can bring the number of cases down to zero.” She said a key part of bringing the outbreak under control was ensuring communities understood EVD, as teams going into some areas were still facing resistance. Community participation is a critical success factor for EVD control, Dr. Chan said. “In all the outbreaks that WHO were able to manage successfully, that was a success element and this is not happening in this current situation.”
Response Efforts and Health
6. Several doctors in Sierra Leone were on strike for a second day on Tuesday to demand better care for medical workers who catch EVD, after a spate of recent deaths. The doctors want assurances that they will have access to life saving equipment, like dialysis machines, if they become infected.
Outreach and Education
15. Yesterday, on Anti-Corruption Day, UNDP in collaboration with Liberia’s Anti-Corruption Commission and the Carter Center set up public conversations on community radio stations in Bong, Lofa, Rural Montserrado and Nimba counties regarding how EVD response funds are used locally. County task forces collected and shared data for the wider public on who the donors are, how much they are funding, what activities and equipment they are contributing to, and which groups are being targeted. Community members made suggestions on existing gaps and possible priorities. To encourage people to listen to the shows in remote areas, 1,200 solar radios manufactured by South Africa based NGO Lifeline Energy were distributed across the four counties. UNDP plans to scale up the initiative and distribute another 3,000 radios targeting patients in ETUs, survivors and others.

9 December 2014 |
Response Efforts and Health
4. Yesterday UNMEER received 20,000 sets of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from the Japan Disaster Relief Team. This is the first batch of 700,000 sets of PPEs committed by the government of Japan to UNMEER to help provide critical protection to healthcare workers in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali. At the official handover ceremony in Accra, SRSG Banbury thanked the government of Japan and stressed the need for continued contributions from partners around the world to keep up the fight against EVD.
6. Community resistance increased in the past week in certain areas of Guinea, even leading to violent actions by local communities against EVD responders — including a UNICEF contractor. At the same time, resistance has been overcome in other areas.
Essential Services
17. Two EVD-waste management machines have arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The machines will be installed in two EVD treatment facilities: in a military hospital in Freetown and the Hastings Treatment Centre in Waterloo. Two medical waste advisors and two machinists will ensure the machines are installed properly, work effectively, and that staff are trained on how to use them safely. The sterilizing machines, known as autoclaves, decontaminate and compress used medical equipment and waste through several cycles of high-pressure steam and vacuuming, allowing for their safe disposal. The machines are the first of their kind in any of the Ebola-affected countries. UNDP expects a total of 11 autoclaves for ETCs across the country.

8 December 2014 |
Key Political and Economic Developments
1. Liberia’s Supreme Court on Sunday lifted a government order suspending campaigning in and around the capital for next week’s senate election, imposed on the grounds that campaigning risks spreading EVD. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s government imposed the executive order last week, banning the holding of political rallies in Montserrado County, which includes the capital. It was contested by her son, Robert Sirleaf, who is running as an independent candidate for the senate. He had appealed for a temporary lifting of the ban, arguing that to stop campaigning in just one part of the country is discriminatory. The court will hear a petition on Monday by some political parties, civil society groups and others to postpone national senate polls until EVD is defeated.
2. The National Coordinator of Guinea’s National Ebola Response Cell (NERC) informed UNMEER that, on instructions from President Condé, a number of cabinet ministers left for the field to meet with local authorities and the population in sub-prefectures featuring community resistance. The ministers were instructed to sensitize and inform the population about the government’s response strategy, reinforce the authority of the prefectural EVD response coordinators, and ensure the swifter deployment of comités de veille (community watch committees), which President Condé has criticized as progressing too slowly. President Condé has also instructed the NERC and its pillar heads to start undertaking field missions from 8 December to show the government’s resolve to intensify response efforts.
Human Rights
3. WHO informed that EVD contact tracing efforts had to be suspended in the village of Sanassia in Sanguiana sub-prefecture (Kouroussa prefecture, Guinea) as well as in the sub-prefecture of Watanga (Macenta prefecture) due to local community resistance, including alleged death threats against EVD response workers.
5. Around 20 United Nations peacekeepers placed under quarantine in Mali after they were potentially exposed to EVD more than three weeks ago have been released. The soldiers were being treated at a clinic in the capital Bamako for injuries sustained while serving in MINUSMA, when a nurse working at the facility died of EVD. The MINUSMA solders were then placed under quarantine, but have not presented symptoms of illness and have therefore been released. Mali has registered eight cases of EVD so far: 7 confirmed and 1 probable. 6 patients have died.
7. An UNMIL peacekeeper who contracted EVD has arrived in the Netherlands for treatment on Saturday. The Nigerian man was admitted to the University Medical Center in Utrecht. The Netherlands follows Germany, France and Switzerland in taking on EVD patients at the request of the World Health Organization.
Essential Services
19. UNICEF released essential drugs and supplies to three ngo partners to cover 40% of health facilities, as part of the restoration of essential health services effort in Liberia.