A man peddles plastic Christmas trees and lights in downtown Monrovia. Photo credit: Intelink Ebola Digest 1. Better Ebola tests expected within months New diagnostic tests to more rapidly and simply detect Ebola could be available for use in the West Africa epidemic in the next few months, the World Health Organization and partner agencies say. It now takes between nine hours and four days to get confirmation of a suspected case of Ebola in West […]

In a dramatic meeting on December 22, United Nations Security Council members discussed the human rights situation in North Korea and overwhelmingly voted to elevate the issue to the Council’s official agenda. The debate follows the release of the findings and recommendations of a Commission of Inquiry mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, the UN’s highest intergovernmental human rights body, to investigate the human rights situation in North Korea. The meeting also follows the comments by

As we enter the New Year, we wanted to highlight a few new articles and resources that provide a powerful look back at key moments from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. Some of these moments were missed opportunities, from which the global community can learn a great deal in future outbreak situations. Some of these moments marked progress and successes, which resulted from the robust international response that has been underway since

This post is by Rebecca Martin, PhD, Director, Global Immunization Division, Center for Global Health, U.S. CDC As 2014 draws to a close, one theme that has been continuously present is the importance of a strong public health infrastructure in a country to effectively protect against vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs).  Universal access to immunization is the Decade of Vaccines vision, and in order to achieve this, more efforts are needed to build upon the existing infrastructure developed for immunization

1. Ebola cases reach over 20,000 Cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea have reached over 20,000. New numbers released from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday show Ebola has infected 20,081 people and killed 7,842. That’s nearly 400 new cases of the disease in just four days. Read more here. 2. Key recommendations for combating Ebola from outgoing UNMEER chief The fight against Ebola requires a district-by-district approach according to Tony

The start of a new year is a time for hope, and I’m especially hopeful this year because of the historic opportunities we have to help millions of people move from poverty to prosperity. This is no small task, but through our collective work together in support of the United Nations, we’ve seen time and time again that tangible progress is possible: whether it’s cutting child mortality by nearly half since 1990, distributing a record number of

By Haitham El-noush, Senior Advisor for Innovation in Health and Development at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation This blog is part of the Innovation Working Group mHealth Catalytic Grant series, highlighting the impact of mobile technology on global health and development. Learn more about the 26 mHealth projects funded under the IWG mHealth grants program here.   During the past three years, profound work has been undertaken to harness mobile health (mHealth) technology to improve

“When our children are sick, when are children are dying, we can’t hold them at a time when we want to be closest to them. When our relatives die, we can’t take care of them the way our traditions demand.” – Bruce Aylward, World Health Organization Assistant Director-General on Ebola, shares stories the perspectives of individuals hit by the Ebola outbreak in a recent TEDx event. Top news from the week of January 9th The race for the