Health officials face a two-pronged challenge in combating the deadly virus: one, the Congo is a war zone. The other is the virus's perceived disgrace and people's fears of the unknown.

To get around these challenges, one local Catholic bishop made a point of being vaccinated in the village where the outbreak was identified so as to encourage others at risk to present themselves to health officials.

Traditional healers have also been trained in Ebola prevention.

Misinformation about the virus is another challenge health officials face. To combat this, the Congo's health ministry has put out a notice against a social media rumour that says eating onions would guard against Ebola.

"It's untrue!" the notice says. "Apart from giving you bad breath that might keep people away from you, onions have no protective effect."

There is also local resistance to health workers who are trying to promote safe burials. These are crucial to containing the virus as it is spread via bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.

"We are experiencing fear and anger in some communities against Red Cross teams who come to bury the deceased," says Dr Balla Conde, head of emergency operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Source

• La Croix
• The Citizen
• VOA News
• Image: CNN.com

Baptisms, confirmations, ordinations and anointing of the sick have been suspended until further notice in the country's northwestern regions hardest hit by the outbreak.

So far, at least 25 people have died since the outbreak was confirmed in early May. Read more

Just when I was mulling the "what can I give other than a goat" issue over, I came across Unicef's Ebola kit.

Now that's a charity Christmas gift that is timely. The $55 pack contains soap, gloves, chlorine and protective gear for one health worker in affected areas of Africa. Continue reading

Genesis II Church of Health and Healing leader James Humble is heading a three-day, US$500-a-head ($646) seminar in Ngatea on the Hauraki Plains.

The event is part of an international tour by the non-religious church, which has its headquarters in the Dominican Republic, to publicise its Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS). Read More

Nina Pham, a nurse from Texas, was the first person to contract the virus within the United States.

This is believed to have happened when she was nursing Thomas Duncan, who subsequently died.

Now declared free of Ebola after five negative test results, Ms Pham gave thanks to God and to all who prayed for her.

"I feel fortunate and blessed to be standing here today," Ms Pham said in a press conference on October24.

"I would first and foremost like to thank God, my family and friends. Throughout this ordeal, I have put my trust in God and my medical team."

Her friends have described Ms Pham as a devout Catholic.

She also thanked fellow survivor Dr Kent Brantly for donating his blood plasma for her treatment.

Ms Pham called his donation a "selfless act".

"I believe in the power of prayer because I know so many people all over the world have been praying for me," she continued.

"I join you in prayer now for the recovery of others."

Ms Pham thanked everyone who had been involved in her care, both in Texas and in Maryland at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr Anthony Fauci, from the National Institutes of Health, said it wasn't clear which treatment saved Ms Pham because they were all experimental.

Before returning to her "normal life" in Texas, Ms Pham received a bear hug from President Barack Obama in the Oval Office in Washington.

Ebola continues to devastate parts of west Africa.

The World Health Organisation said that nearly 5000 deaths had been reported as of October 19, but the true numbers could be as high as 15,000.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• ABC
• Image: ABC

But while the first cases in the U.S. and Spain have stirred fears over the past week, we don't need to fear an unstoppable epidemic in developed countries. As World Bank President Jim Yong Kim aptly put it in a piece for the Huffington Post:

"The knowledge and infrastructure to treat the sick and contain the virus exists in high- and middle-income counties. However, over many years, we have failed to make these things accessible to low-income people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. So now thousands of people in these countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place."

Dr. Kim makes the crucial point here — the current Ebola outbreak is much more than a public health crisis — it is an inequality crisis.

People dying of Ebola in West Africa did not choose to be born in West Africa, any more than I chose to be born in the United States or my wife chose to be born in England.

The Scriptures remind us time and again of our obligation to care for the widow, the orphan, and the sick.

Accordingly, it is clearly our duty as Christians to do everything we can for the people suffering from this epidemic.

Combatting the current outbreak is important beyond saving lives in the short term; the World Bank estimates that the economic cost in terms of lost growth that Ebola could cause in West Africa could rise into the tens of billions of dollars.

Such a scenario would make inequality between this region and the developed world even worse — making it that much more difficult for nations like Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone to experience the economic development that will be needed to reduce the likelihood and severity of future epidemics.

So fighting Ebola means much more than simply sending funding, medicine, and personnel to West Africa to contain the outbreak. Continue reading

- Jim Wallis is a christian leader for social change.

Image: Sojo Net

An air force plane from Spain was sent on August 6 to get Fr Miguel Pajares, 75, who was in West Africa doing missionary work.

The illness has claimed the lives of nearly 900 people in the region since February.

There is no known cure and no vaccine to protect against the disease.

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding.

It is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.

Fr Pajares had been working in Liberia for more than five decades

When told he would be repatriated, his reaction was: "This news has lifted my spirits, it is great, I am very happy. It is worth fighting on."

Spanish authorities organised his repatriation in line with World Health Organisation procedures.

Fr Pajares belongs to the Madrid-based, non-profit organisation Juan Ciudad and the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios, which had requested the priest's urgent transfer to Spain.

He will be treated at the Hospital Carlos III in northern Madrid, which specialises in tropical diseases.

The Spanish priest has been in quarantine at Saint Joseph Hospital in Monrovia, along with five other missionaries, since the death of the hospital's director from Ebola.

Two of the missionaries, from African nations, had tested positive for Ebola and Fr Pajares asked if they could also be brought to Spain with him.

But Spanish authorities said they are only working on a request to help a Spanish citizen.

Two Americans who worked for Christian aid agencies in Liberia and were infected with Ebola were brought back to the United States for treatment in recent days.

Sources

• Daily Mirror
• Associated Press
• Image: Cuatro

If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don't just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.

Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife.

Teams of veterinarians and conservation biologists are in the midst of a global effort with medical doctors and epidemiologists to understand the "ecology of disease." It is part of a project called Predict, which is financed by the United States Agency for International Development. Experts are trying to figure out, based on how people alter the landscape — with a new farm or road, for example — where the next diseases are likely to spill over into humans and how to spot them when they do emerge, before they can spread. They are gathering blood, saliva and other samples from high-risk wildlife species to create a library of viruses so that if one does infect humans, it can be more quickly identified. And they are studying ways of managing forests, wildlife and livestock to prevent diseases from leaving the woods and becoming the next pandemic.

It isn't only a public health issue, but an economic one. The World Bank has estimated that a severe influenza pandemic, for example, could cost the world economy $3 trillion. Read more

Sources

• The New York Times Sunday Review
• Image: Ohio State University