Media sources report on a new World Bank pledge of an additional $100 million to help speed new health workers to West African nations affected by Ebola.

Agence France-Presse: World Bank gives $100 mn for Ebola health workers in W. Africa
“The World Bank said Thursday it was immediately providing $100 million to support the deployment of more health workers to Ebola-stricken West Africa…” (10/30).

Devex: Jim Kim eyes global health security reserve corps
“The World Bank is pledging $100 million in additional funding to the Ebola crisis, part of which will be used to establish a coordination hub that could hopefully address bottlenecks in the recruitment of international health professionals — and jumpstart a permanent global health security reserve corps…” (Ravelo, 10/30).

The Guardian: World Bank pledges $100m to send health workers to Ebola-hit countries
“…Treatment centers in the three countries at the heart of the epidemic — Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea — are being built but the biggest need is for doctors, nurses, and other health care workers to staff them. The United Nations says around 5,000 international personnel are needed, including up to 1,000 foreign health workers…” (Boseley, 10/30).

Reuters: World Bank funding for Ebola fight hits $500 million
“…World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said the three states were still struggling to get enough health staff to areas with the highest infection rates…” (Miles, 10/30).

U.N. News Centre: U.N. Ebola response in West Africa to be bolstered by increase in World Bank funding
“…The new injection of World Bank funding will fuel the Ebola response’s sprint towards reaching the 70-70-60 target established by U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) and WHO with the goal of isolating and treating 70 percent of suspected Ebola cases in West Africa and safely burying 70 percent of the dead within the next 60 days…” (10/30).

Wall Street Journal: World Bank Pledges $100 Million to Fight Ebola in West Africa
“…The World Bank’s latest $100 million in aid brings the development bank’s total pledges to $500 million for Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to combat Ebola…” (Talley, 10/30).

World Bank Group: World Bank Group Pledges Additional $100 million to Speed New Health Workers to Ebola-stricken Countries (10/30).

World Bank Group: Statement by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim At Joint Press Conference on Ebola with Ghanaian Vice President H.E. Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur (10/30).

Link to individual story

Associated Press: Nations in Americas join in battle against Ebola
“Representatives of countries from around the Americas, including the United States, have agreed to work together in their response to Ebola, adopting similar procedures in such things as the establishment of epidemiological monitoring centers and coordinating the transport of biological samples…” (Rodriguez, 10/30).

Link to individual story

The Hill: HHS, DHS chiefs to testify on Ebola funding
“Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson are among the witnesses expected to testify on the government’s response to Ebola at an upcoming Senate Appropriations Committee hearing…” (Shabad, 10/30).

Link to individual story

News outlets report on U.S. states’ various isolation policies for Ebola workers returned from West Africa, and MSF’s comments on how some policies are impacting its workforce.

New York Times: From Governors, a Mix of Hard-Line Acts and Conciliation Over Ebola
“…As more doctors and nurses return from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, public anxiety has soared about the potential for contagion — even though only one person in the United States has died from the virus, and several have recovered or returned from West Africa and never shown symptoms. In response, governors of both parties are struggling to define public health policies on the virus, leaving a confusing patchwork of rules regarding monitoring, restricting, and quarantining health care workers who have treated Ebola patients, whether domestically or abroad…” (Bidgood/Zernike, 10/30).

Reuters: U.S. quarantines ‘chilling’ Ebola fight in West Africa: MSF
“Mandatory quarantines ordered by some U.S. states for doctors and nurses returning from West Africa’s Ebola outbreak are creating a ‘chilling effect’ on aid work there, the humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders said on Thursday…” (Allen, 10/30).

Link to individual story

Wall Street Journal: Europeans’ Plan to do Uncontrolled Ebola Trial Draws Fire
“A consortium including European universities and medical groups plans to give experimental drugs to West African Ebola patients without assigning some to a placebo group, touching off an intense trans-Atlantic quarrel over what is ethical and effective in treating the virus. … That has put them at odds with senior U.S. officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health…” (Burton/Loftus, 10/30).

Link to individual story

TIME Magazine discusses the WHO’s response to the West African Ebola outbreak and features an interview with WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.

TIME: The World Health Organization Comes Under Fire for Failure to Stop Ebola
“The agency has been missing in action at a critical time…” (Walt, 10/30).

TIME: WHO Chief Says Ebola Response ‘Did Not Match’ Scale of the Outbreak
“…On Oct. 28, WHO invited TIME to spend the day inside its Geneva headquarters, watching officials grapple with the Ebola epidemic and sitting in on a two-hour, top-level crisis meeting. In a wide-ranging interview with TIME’s Vivienne Walt, in her Geneva office, Chan, a 67-year-old Hong Konger, explains how she and her staff have struggled with the outbreak…” (Walt, 10/30).

Link to individual story

The Guardian: Scale of Ebola epidemic in Guinea forces WFP into uncharted territory
“…Elisabeth Faure, WFP’s Guinea director, said the scale of the [Ebola] epidemic was forcing the organization to operate far beyond its core emergency mission of getting $25m (£15.5m) of food to at least 353,000 people. As well as distributing the food, she said, the program was now being called on to help build Ebola treatment centers, move aid workers around the country, and provide emergency communications…” (Jones, 10/30).

Link to individual story

News outlets report on the economic damage expected to occur in West Africa as a result of the Ebola epidemic.

Reuters: IMF sees large financing needs next year for Ebola-hit countries
“The International Monetary Fund foresees large financing needs next year in the three West African countries hardest hit by the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus…” (10/30).

Scientific American: Ebola Exacerbates West Africa’s Poverty Crisis
“…[Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,] which already lacked functioning health care systems, now face the economic and social aftereffects of a devastating outbreak. Just as Ebola insidiously infects the very health care workers tasked with fighting it, the virus is straining already struggling countries, exacerbating problems that linger from recent civil wars and deep history…” (Biello, 10/30).

Link to individual story

New York Times: Liberia’s Ebola Crisis Puts President in Harsh Light
“…For the last eight years, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 76, has walked a precarious political tightrope. As Liberia’s first elected leader after a devastating civil war, she has juggled enemies and allies while pushing this country on its first sustained course of economic growth in decades. … Ms. Johnson Sirleaf is the first woman elected president of an African country, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and arguably the most recognized leader on the continent. … But Ebola is threatening to derail that legacy…” (10/30).

Link to individual story

Ebola Deeply: Ebola and Women: Julia Duncan-Cassell, Liberia’s Minister of Gender
“In Liberia, women — the primary caregivers at home and in health centers — have been hit particularly hard by the Ebola outbreak. Liberia’s Minister of Gender and Development, Julia Duncan-Cassell, spoke to Ebola Deeply about how women are suffering the consequences, while serving at the forefront of efforts to contain the disease…” (10/30).

Link to individual story

News outlets report on the situations in Liberia, where progress is being made against Ebola, and Sierra Leone, where officials are looking at emergency transport solutions and warning the conditions will worsen.

Associated Press: Ebola: Danger in Sierra Leone, progress in Liberia
“Liberia is making some progress in containing the Ebola outbreak while the crisis in Sierra Leone is going to get worse, the top anti-Ebola officials in the two countries said…” (Roy-Macaulay/Paye-Layleh, 10/30).

Wall Street Journal: In Sierra Leone, Ambulances Carry Ebola Patients, Big Questions
“…Sierra Leone’s ambulances zip down freeways, blow by crowded street markets, and bob over rutted jungle roads. Yet all that movement has exposed a dangerously disjointed emergency-response system, one that sends gravely ill patients across the country for hospital beds they sometimes don’t live to see. That has prompted a rethinking of how the country dispatches its emergency vehicles, in the hope of establishing a template for other countries battling Ebola…” (Wonacott, 10/30).

Link to individual story

News outlets report on the launch of a U.N. campaign to end female genital mutilation.

Agence France-Presse: U.N. chief launches campaign to end female genital mutilation
“U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon launched Thursday a global campaign to end the often deadly practice of female genital mutilation within a generation, as survivors said it had ‘shattered’ their lives…” (Kyama, 10/30).

Associated Press: U.N. chief criticizes female genital mutilation
“U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is lauding the British newspaper The Guardian for its work to raise awareness about female genital mutilation. Speaking in Kenya on Thursday, Ban called female genital mutilation a brutal practice that must be stopped to increase the health, human rights, and empowerment of women and girls…” (10/30).

U.N. News Centre: In Kenya, U.N. chief kicks off global media campaign to end female genital mutilation
“The practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) must come to a quick end and the global media can play a critical role in making that happen, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon affirmed [Thursday] during his visit to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi…” (10/30).

Link to individual story

The Atlantic: Africa’s Top Health Challenge: Cardiovascular Disease
“…[W]hile donors have poured resources into fighting infectious diseases, non-communicable, chronic diseases have quietly but rapidly ascended the morbidity and mortality ladders, especially high blood pressure, or hypertension. Today, cardiovascular disease is the number-one cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa in adults over the age of 30. … But current funding spins a different narrative…” (Ouyang, 10/30).

Link to individual story

The Guardian: DfID not doing enough to protect poor from corruption, says aid watchdog
“The U.K.’s Department for International Development (DfID) is failing to address the petty but widespread corruption that blights the daily lives of the world’s poorest people and has a particularly corrosive impact on women and girls, Britain’s aid watchdog has warned. … The report says that women and girls bear the brunt of corruption, as it often limits both their access to justice and their social and economic progress. … Women also lose out, the report adds, when money has to change hands for access to maternal health services and education…” (Jones, 10/30).

Link to individual story

The following opinion pieces discuss issues related to the ongoing Ebola epidemic.

Washington Post: A global attention on disease gives Bill Gates his moment
Michael Gerson, opinion writer

“…In a tragic, unsought sense, this is [Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-Chair Bill] Gates’s moment. The focus of his life — preventable disease — is suddenly the obsession of the world. Gates, who has donated $50 million to the Ebola fight (through his foundation), will give a major address Sunday at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. … Gates’s remarks on Ebola are the most likely to reach the media bloodstream. … The focus of Gates’s speech, however, is not flu or Ebola; it is malaria. … During his upcoming speech, Gates will announce a significant increase in his foundation’s malaria commitment…” (10/30).

Wall Street Journal: The U.S. Military Mission Against Ebola
Jonathan Moreno, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Stephan Xenakis, a retired Army brigadier general and adjunct professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

“Military health care forces under Africom, the United States Africa Command, have been deployed to assist Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in setting up preventive health services and treatment centers for the Ebola epidemic. The mission of the U.S. military, charged with defending our country’s national security, sometimes includes responding to epidemics that could threaten America and its allies. It has the experience and the infrastructure to do so. … The U.S. military deployment to this afflicted region could turn out to have incalculable benefits” (10/30).

Foreign Policy: West Africa’s Financial Immune Deficiency
Rick Rowden, author

“…Since the 1980s, when the doctrines of Thatcher and Reagan reigned supreme, the IMF’s monetarist approach has meant prioritizing price stability (low inflation) and fiscal restraint (low budget deficits) over other spending goals in developing countries. These policies had the effect of greatly limiting overall public spending each year. Because of this squeeze, most of the budget went to immediate needs and recurrent expenditures and little was left over for scaling up long-term public investment in infrastructure, including the underlying public health infrastructure. … [I]f the international community is serious about addressing chronic under-investment in the public health systems in these countries, it will also have to revise the obvious shortcomings of IMF fiscal and monetary policies” (10/30).

Link to individual story

Huffington Post: Women in Charge: A Force for Change on the Global Stage
Deborah Derrick, president of the Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

“…This week, my organization, Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Friends), is privileged to bring together two extraordinary models of female leadership for an intimate discussion on global health and development. On Oct. 30, Dr. Helene Gayle, President and CEO of CARE, and Barbara P. Bush, Co-Founder and CEO of Global Health Corps, [shared] their unique perspectives on the role that U.S. leadership plays in the fight against the three diseases on which Friends focuses. … As a fellow global health advocate, it gives me great hope to see organizations like CARE and GHC continue a much-needed push to improve the quality of life for women and girls around the world. It is inspiring to see individuals like Helene Gayle and Barbara Bush leading the charge, heralding a new wave of leaders … I have no doubt that when powerful, visionary women such as these join together, they can indeed change the world” (10/30).

Link to individual story

Devex: Fuel the fight
Martin Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More

“…Through a massive global effort … the rate of malaria deaths in Africa has been cut in half in under a decade. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 3.3 million lives have been saved since the year 2000 from malaria alone. … Our success in fighting malaria over the past decade has been built upon a solid foundation of funding, and the continued support of the U.S., U.K., and Australian governments; as well as institutions such as the Global Fund and the World Bank, will be essential to finishing the job. But we also need endemic countries and regions to commit to shouldering an increasing share of the costs as we move toward malaria elimination. In the end, it will not be one sector or government that will finally eradicate malaria. It will be a global success — one we should all be proud to have contributed to” (10/30).

Link to individual story

Project Syndicate: Rethinking Hunger
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, assistant director-general and coordinator for Economic and Social Development at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization

“The world has a nutrition problem. Though great strides have been made toward the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of undernourished people in developing countries, the problem remains persistent, pervasive, and complex. … The upcoming Second International Conference on Nutrition in Rome will provide a historic opportunity to galvanize political commitment to enhance nutrition for all through better policies and international solidarity. Failure to make the needed investments in food access, nutrition, and sustainability is morally — and economically — unjustifiable” (10/30).

Link to individual story

ONE: New ONE analysis shows major gaps in Ebola response data
In an analysis of three new Ebola response trackers, ONE Global Health Policy Director Erin Hohlfelder and Research Assistant Anu Dathan “set out the latest on what key countries have promised — our best attempt at outlining which countries have committed most to Ebola across three categories: financing, health care personnel, and in-kind contributions…” (10/30).

Link to individual story

The following posts discuss a new report from MSF on the responses to tuberculosis in eight high-burden countries.

Médecins Sans Frontières Access Campaign: Out Of Step: Deadly implementation gaps in the TB response
“…Based on a survey of eight high TB burden countries, MSF’s research reveals that efforts to control the epidemic are dangerously out of step with international recommendations and proven best practices, leaving drug-resistant forms of TB to spread unabated. MSF warns that governments, donors, and industry must act now, using every means available, to step-up the response to the crisis, or face a further growth in resistance” (10/30).

Yahoo! News Malaysia’s “Pulse”: The global drug-resistant tuberculosis crisis
Rémi Carrier, executive director of MSF Hong Kong, discusses the report, writing, “…[C]ountries and global health actors at every level must step up their commitment and actions to ensure major strides are taken in the fight against TB, and in particular to curb the global DR-TB crisis. It’s time for TB research and development efforts to be prioritized and funded in a way that ensures lifesaving diagnostics and treatments rapidly reach the people who so desperately need them” (10/31).

Link to individual story

Center for Global Development’s “Global Health Policy Blog”: Can Nigeria’s Success on Ebola Translate to TB?
Amanda Glassman, senior fellow and director of global health policy at CGD, and David Bryden, TB advocacy officer at RESULTS, discuss whether Nigeria’s tuberculosis response can be as effective as its response to a recent Ebola outbreak. They write, “Nigeria’s response to Ebola has drawn high praise now that the concerted effort by government has stopped the disease in its tracks. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the response of Africa’s most populous country to another, much larger health crisis, that of tuberculosis (TB), a disease more easily transmitted than Ebola…” (10/30).

Link to individual story

Global Health Coalition’s “Breakthroughs”: How the upcoming election could impact global health R&D
Jenny Howell, GHTC’s senior policy and advocacy associate, discusses “what the outcomes of next week’s election could mean for global health research and development (R&D)” (10/30).

Link to individual story

Center for Global Development’s “Global Health Policy Blog”: Selecting WHO’s Next Africa Regional Director: An Interview with Candidate Dr. Matshidiso Moeti
Amanda Glassman, senior fellow and director of global health policy at CGD, and Yuna Sakuma, a CGD research assistant, note the WHO in November will select its next regional director for Africa. “In this post, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti — currently the inter-country support coordinator for Eastern and Southern Africa at WHO AFRO — shares her views on current challenges and vision for the future of WHO AFRO,” they write (10/30).

Link to individual story

Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: Live Blogs
The blog presents archives of recent live blogging posts from two conferences. Antigone Barton, writer and editor of “Science Speaks” and senior communications officer at the Center for Global Health Policy, reported from the HIV Research for Prevention Conference (HIV R4P) held this week in Cape Town, South Africa. And Christine Lubinski, vice president for global health at the center, is reporting from the 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health, taking place this week in Barcelona, Spain (accessed 10/31).

Link to individual story

Aidspan: Global Fund Observer
Aidspan, an independent watchdog of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, has published Issue 254 of the “Global Fund Observer.” The newsletter focuses on tuberculosis prevention, care, treatment, and financing, including two news articles and several commentaries (10/31).

Link to individual story