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By Category: International

Why Big Data Missed the Early Warning Signs of Ebola

ForeignPolicy- With the Centers for Disease Control now forecasting up to 1.4 million new infections from the current Ebola outbreak, what could “big data” do to help us identify the earliest warnings of future outbreaks and track the movements of the current outbreak in realtime? It turns out that monitoring the spread of Ebola can teach us a  Read More »

WHO | Experimental Ebola vaccines

WorldHealthOrganization- The WHO has announced that they have been assessing the status of work to test and eventually license two candidate Ebola vaccines. The two candidate vaccines have clinical-grade vials available for phase 1 pre-licensure clinical trials.

Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa — The First 9 Months of the Epidemic and Forward Projections

TheNewEnglandJournalofMedicine- Report by the W.H.O. on the  clinical and epidemiological characteristics of the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone during the first 9 months of the epidemic (as of September, 14, Senegal had reported only a single case). The report furthermore documents trends in the epidemic thus far and projects expected case numbers  Read More »

Ebola Crisis: Obama Says World Falling Short in Response

WallStreetJournal- President Barack Obama, during a high-level United Nations meeting on the Ebola outbreak,  criticized the international response to the epidemic in West Africa as falling short of what is needed to combat a crisis “spreading at alarming speed.” Specifically, Mr. Obama said institutions like the U.N. need to move faster, and more countries need to contribute  Read More »

Experimental therapies: growing interest in the use of whole blood or plasma from recovered Ebola patients (convalescent therapies)

Ebola virus disease currently has no vaccines or medicines approved by national regulatory authorities for use in humans save for the purpose of compassionate care. To date, the virus has infected 6242 people and killed 2909 of them. These figures, which are far greater than those from all previous Ebola outbreaks combined, are known by  Read More »