Saturday, November 1, 2014

Things calming down. Reports of decreased infections in Liberia, particularly Monrovia. Not sure if this is real or if the infections are now occurring in remote areas without good reporting. Also, the issue of second waves in Guinea and Sierra Leone. CDC having to put much effort into investigating Person Under Investigation (PUIs). These are people who are from West Africa who get a fever or nausea or vomiting for any of a number of benign reasons. Since they are from West Africa, these are being investigated, sometimes using PPEs, which is an “abundance of caution”, but a major investment (?waste) of effort. Cliff Lane is in Monrovia doing spade work for the hopefully upcoming RCT for the Ebola vaccine. Heard on Secretary’s call this AM (8:30 AM on Saturday) that now WHO (likely Marie- Paule Kieny) wants WHO to be responsible for the DSMBs of all clinical trials in West Africa. This is an egregious attempt on the part of WHO to stay “relevant” in an area in which they have no expertise. It is “stunning” to me how they just want to insert themselves into things where they quite frankly are incompetent. They already have made it clear that they just want to distribute unproven interventions (vaccines and treatments) and even though we seem to be winning the argument, they keep coming back in insidious ways to try to derail the scientific clinical trials process. Amazing!!