Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water, Sanitation Jan -Feb 2014 Vol.10 No1 | Page 39

Health
Sanitation ‘ignored’
They say that while
the importance
of hygiene - for
example, hand
washing - is being
recognized in
some places, much
less consideration
is given to the
complete package of safe water, hygiene and sanitation.In
some cases sanitation - toilets and facilities to dispose of
waste - is being ignored.
Nearly 40% of health facilities in 54 low-income countries
do not have reliable clean water, according to the World
Health Organization.The report suggests that many efforts
to improve newborn health focus on specific measures,
sometimes at the expense of these basic facilities.And it
argues that the lack of ways to dispose of waste safely
could hamper the success of other interventions.
The experts behind the report say governments and
agencies should pay much greater attention to the link
between sanitation and saving mothers’ and babies’ lives.

Ebola Outbreak Update: Only Five Cases Left
In Liberia, Report Says
Just five confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease remain
in Liberia, a West
African country
that has seen more
than 3,600 deaths
from the outbreak
of the deadly virus,
Liberia, one of the three countries most affected Reuters quoted a
by Ebola virus disease, has seen more than 3,600 senior health official
deaths during the current outbreak. Getty Images as saying Friday.
“It means that we
are going down to zero, if everything goes well, if other
people don’t get sick in other places,” said Deputy Health
Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, who leads Liberia’s Ebola task
force.
Three of the remaining cases were in the capital city of
Monrovia, and the other two were in Bomi and Grand
Cape Mount counties. Liberia could be rid of the virus by
the end of February, Nyenswah said.
It’s a monumental turning point in the Ebola crisis since
the height of the outbreak, when Liberia had 500 reported
infections per week. Hospitals were filled to capacity with
victims and had to turn away new patients. There are now
days when no new cases are reported there at all, BBC
News reported.
Guinea and Sierra Leone, the other two countries most
affected by Ebola, have also seen falling infection rates. As
of last week, cases in Guinea dipped to 20 per week from
a peak of 292 and cases in Sierra Leone dropped to 117

per week from a peak of 748, according to BBC News.
“The incidence is pretty clearly going down in all three
countries now. Each of the last three weeks has been
the most promising we’ve seen so far, the message is
reductions in all places,” Dr. Christopher Dye, the director
of strategy in the office of the director-general at the
World Health Organization, or WHO, told BBC News. “I
would have identified the turning point as the beginning of
the decline, first in Liberia and then later in Sierra Leone
and Guinea.”
The current Ebola outbreak has killed at least 8,600
people -- a body count that makes this the worst recorded
outbreak since the disease was first identified in 1976,
according to studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in conjunction with WHO. The
recent sharp decrease in the number of cases is partly due
to a tremendous global response and a massive publicawareness campaign. Health officials said early detection is
key.
“Ebola was spreading undetected for three months in
Guinea,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said
Thursday. “The first case happened in December 2013,
and it was not detected until March 2014.”
Latest News
The Ebola virus is MUTATING, and ‘could become
more contagious’, warn scientists who first identified the
outbreak

• Researchers in France believe the Ebola virus is
showing signs of mutating
• Team have been tracing the virus’ spread
throughout Guinea
• Experts say it is ‘not surprising’ the virus is
changing - it is like HIV and influenza which tend
to mutate quickly
• They cautioned it is very unlikely Ebola will mutate
to become airborne
Scientists tracking the spread of Ebola
have warned the virus is showing signs of
mutating
Scientists tracking the spread of the Ebola
in West Africa have warned the virus is
showing signs of mutating, and could
become more contagious.
It was a team of researchers from the
Institut Pasteur in France who first identified the outbreak
in Guinea, in March last year.
Patient zero - the first person to be infected - has been
identified as two-year-old Emile Ouamouno from the rural
village of Meliandou.
He died four days after he fell ill with a sky-high fever and
vomiting in December 2013.
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