November 2014 The Epidemiology Monitor

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Latest Ebola Situation Report Contains Good News & Bad

In This Issue

Epidemiologic Patterns Vary In The Most Affected Countries In one of the most comprehensive summaries of the Ebola outbreak to date, the latest WHO situation report documents more than 13,000 cases as of early November in eight countries (Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, and the United States) and almost 5,000 deaths. Among the three West African countries reporting more than 99% of the cases, weekly incidence appears stable in Guinea and declining in Liberia. However, the incidence continues to rise in Sierra Leone, especially in Freetown the capital city.

The Good News While initial reports of a decline in cases were uncertain, a recent press release from Doctors Without Borders on November 10 confirms that cases being admitted to their treatment centers are clearly down for the first time in the epidemic. Warning that case numbers could rise again as they have in Guinea, the organization says “priority should be given to a more flexible approach that allows a rapid response to new outbreaks and gets - Ebola continues on page 2

Harvard Epidemiologist Receives NIH Pioneer Award To Better Learn What Works In Public Health What do you do as a productive researcher after you have published nearly 550 papers and learned about multiple diseases? The answer, if you’re Harvard’s Donna Spiegelman, is you switch gears to become more actively involved in developing methods to better assure the use of what you and others learn from etiologic studies. Spiegelman is

professor of epidemiologic methods at Harvard and a lead numbers and methods person behind the Nurses Health Studies, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and other research projects at Harvard. She will focus the later part of her career doing a better job of evaluating public health interventions. - Harvard continues on page 4

-3Shoe-Leather Epidemiologist Blogs About Ebola on the Front Lines

-6EpiNews Briefs -10Job & Event Marketplace

November 2014 Volume Thirty Five Number Eleven


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