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Tag: West Africa

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Sierra Leone Officially Declared Ebola-Free

Cheers erupted and people danced in the streets Saturday as Sierra Leone marked the end of the Ebola outbreak within its borders, although neighboring Guinea still struggles to stamp out the deadly virus that has killed more than 11,000 mostly in West Africa.

FLORIAN PLAUCHEUR/AFP/Getty Images

Report: Cuba Refuses to Pay Doctors Sent Abroad to Fight Ebola

The estimated 460 Cuban doctors deployed to west Africa to participate in the fight against the Ebola outbreak developing there last year have not been paid the car, home, or World Health Organization (WHO) salaries they were promised if they returned from the mission healthy.

ebola-victim  Abbas DullehAP

Study: Male Survivors Can Carry Ebola for up to Nine Months

A new study by the World Health Organization has found that the Ebola virus can live in the semen of survivors for at least nine months, dramatically increasing the risk of sexual transmission of the disease in west Africa, where an outbreak that began in March 2014 has not yet been fully contained.

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Obama Deploys Troops to Cameroon to Fight Boko Haram

President Obama announced Wednesday that 300 U.S. troops will be deployed to Cameroon to fight the ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram terrorist group. The troops will work to establish a base from which to fly Predator drones into the northeast Nigerian enclave in which Boko Haram is headquartered.

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Boko Haram Attacks Sweep Nigerian Capital, Niger, Chad

Following multiple attacks in its stronghold of northeast Borno state, ISIS affiliate Boko Haram has bombed multiple targets in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, as well as attacking Niger and Chad, both member nations of a military coalition formed to destroy the terrorist group.

AFP PHOTO / ZOOM DOSSO

The Last Frontier in Africa’s Ebola War: Sex Among Survivors

The World Health Organization is warning that the time frame in which male Ebola survivors can spread the virus through their semen may be longer than previously anticipated, keeping an outbreak that began in February 2014 alive as those who are considered free of the disease engage in sexual activity.

Ebola

Ebola: 500+ Quarantined in Once-Cured Sierra Leone Village

The government of Sierra Leone has quarantined 624 people in the past week following the death by Ebola of a man in a town that had not experienced any cases of the deadly virus in months. While the outbreak continues with little natural end in sight, however, scientists have announced a breakthrough vaccine development that could eradicate Ebola for good.

REUTERS/BAZ RATNER

WHO Baffled as Source of New Ebola Outbreak in Liberia Still a Mystery

A new “cluster” of Ebola cases in a coastal region of Liberia has been identified, after a 17-year-old boy, initially misdiagnosed with malaria, was confirmed dead of the virus. Experts have failed to find the source of this new outbreak and are treating it as a separate set of incidents from the massive outbreak that has taken more than 10,000 lives in West Africa since February 2014.

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Sierra Leone: Mothers Refuse to Vaccinate Children for Fear of Resurgent Ebola

Doctors in Port Loko, a northwestern region of Sierra Leone outside Freetown, are reporting a significant drop in the number of mothers bringing their children to hospitals for routine vaccinations. The mothers, they say, fear exposing their children to a resurgent Ebola virus, and in keeping them from hospitals are risking triggering the spread of polio or measles.

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Boko Haram Fuses with ISIS in Dangerous New Alliance

After swearing allegiance to ISIS in March, the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram has now gone a step further, adopting the new name of the “Islamic State’s West Africa Province,” or ISWAP. The title change is more than semantic, and galvanizes the radical Islamist forces in Africa and the Middle East.