Guinea Authorities Dissolve Dozens Of Political Parties With No Election Date Set

Guinea's President Mamadi Doumbouya addresses the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, September 21, 2023, (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

DAKAR, SENEGAL (AP) — Guinea authorities dissolved dozens of political parties and placed two major opposition ones under observation late Monday, while the transitional government has yet to announce a date for elections.

The West African country has been led by a military regime since soldiers ousted President Alpha Conde in 2021. The West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS has pushed for a return to civilian rule and elections are scheduled for 2025.

The mass dissolution of 53 political parties and required observation of 54 others for three months is unprecedented in Guinea, which held its first democratic election in 2010 after decades of authoritarian rule. The Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization announced the moves based on an evaluation of all political parties begun in June. The evaluation was meant to “clean up the political chessboard,” according to the ministry.

The 67 parties that will be under observation for three months can operate normally but must resolve irregularities noted in the report. Those parties include the Rally of the Guinean People, which is the party of former President Alpha Condé, and another major opposition party, the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea.

The authorities said the parties placed under observation failed to hold their party congress within the time limit and to provide bank statements, among other issues.

Guinea is one of a growing number of West African countries, including Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, where the military has taken power and delayed a return to civilian rule. Earlier this year, the military junta in Burkina Faso extended its transition term by five years.

Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, who leads Guinea, overran the president three years ago, saying he was preventing the country from slipping into chaos and chastised the previous government for broken promises.

However, since coming to power he’s been criticized by some for being no better than his predecessor.

In February, the military leader dissolved the government without explanation, saying a new one will be appointed.

Doumbouya has rebuffed attempts by the West and other developed countries to intervene in Africa’s political challenges, saying Africans are “exhausted by the categorizations with which everyone wants to box us in.”

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Guinea’s Leader Defends Coups In Africa And Rebuffs The West, Saying Things Must Change

Guinea's President Mamadi Boumbouya addresses the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

BY CHINEDU ASADU

ABUJA, NIGERIA (AP) — The recent coups in Africa are attempts by militaries to save their countries from presidents’ “broken promises,” the head of Guinea’s junta said Thursday as he rebuffed the West for boxing in the continent of more than 1 billion people.

Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, who was sworn in as Guinea’s interim president following the coup in 2021, told the U.N. General Assembly that beyond condemning the coups, global leaders must also “look to and address the deep-rooted causes.”

“The putschist is not only the person who takes up arms to overthrow a regime,” he told the gathering of world leaders in New York. “I want us all to be well aware of the fact that the real putschists, the most numerous, are those who avoid any condemnation — they are those … who cheat to manipulate the text of the constitution in order to stay in power eternally.”

Guinea is one of several nations in West and Central Africa that have experienced eight coups since 2020, including two – Niger and Gabon – in recent months. The military takeovers, sometimes celebrated by citizens in those countries and condemned by international organizations and foreign countries, have raised concern about the stability of the continent, whose young population of at least 1.3 billion is set to double by 2050 and make up a quarter of the planet’s people.

Doumbouya accused some leaders in Africa of clinging to power by any means — often including amending the constitution — to the detriment of their people.



In Guinea, he said he led soldiers to depose then-President Alpha Conde in the September 2021 coup to prevent the country from “slipping into complete chaos.” He said the situation was similar in other countries hit by coups and was a result of “broken promises, the lethargy of the people and leaders tampering with constitutions with the sole concern of remaining in power to the detriment of collective well-being.”

Doumbouya also rebuffed attempts by the West and other developed countries to intervene in Africa’s political challenges, saying that Africans are “exhausted by the categorizations with which everyone wants to box us in.”

“We Africans are insulted by the boxes, the categories which sometimes place us under the influence of the Americans, sometimes under that of the British, the French, the Chinese and the Turks,” the Guinean leader said. “Today, the African people are more awake than ever and more than ever determined to take their destiny into their own hands.”

While the Guinean leader defended the coups in his country and elsewhere, concerns remain about the effectiveness of such military takeovers in addressing the challenges they said made them “intervene.”

In Mali, where soldiers have been in power since 2020, the Islamic State group almost doubled the territory it controls in less than a year, according to U.N. experts. And in Burkina Faso, which recorded two coups in 2020, economic growth slowed to 2.5% in 2022 after a robust 6.9% the year before.

“Military coups are wrong, as is any tilted civilian political arrangement that perpetuates injustice,” said Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. As the leader of West Africa’s regional bloc of ECOWAS, he is leading efforts of neighbors to reverse the coup in the region.

“The wave crossing parts of Africa does not demonstrate favor towards coups,” He said. “It is a demand for solutions to perennial problems.”

Coups In West Africa

BY KHALID BHATTI

The July 26 military coup in Niger has escalated the already existing tensions in the West African region. General Abdurrahman Tchiani, the head of Niger’s elite presidential guard has declared himself the leader of the country after removing French-backed president Mohamed Bazoum from power. Niger has a history of military coups. Since its independence from France in 1960, Niger has had four successful coups and several failed coups.

France ruled Niger for nearly 70 years. Like any other colonial power, France plundered and exploited the rich mineral resources of Niger, which has huge reserves of Uranium, coal and gold. However, Niger is still poor and one of the least developed countries in the world. It is also the seventh largest producer of uranium in the world.

Niger is a land-locked country and depends on other countries for its imports and exports. According to the United Nations, with nearly 25 million people, Niger is the second least developed country in the world. Extreme poverty and hunger is widespread as the corrupt elite continue to enrich themselves. France largely depends on Niger for its uranium supplies and so also continues to control the country’s mineral and financial resources even after its independence.

At the moment, two battles are going on in West Africa. The first is the struggle of the people for survival. They are tired of poverty, disease, hunger, unemployment and inflation and want to improve their lives. Niger’s people want better lives, security, jobs, better infrastructure, housing and basic services. Their battle is for their basic needs and a better future.

Then there is a power struggle going on between different factions of the ruling elites who are fighting to get maximum share from the loot and plunder of national resources. These different factions of the ruling elite seek the help and support of imperialist powers to hang on to power. In return, the local puppet rulers help multinationals and imperialist countries to plunder the natural resources of their countries. This is what is happening in Niger and other countries of West Africa.

The internal power struggle between president Bazoum and General Tchiani seems to be the main reason behind the military coup in Niger but external factors cannot be ruled out. It is being reported in the media that the president wants to remove General Tchiani from his powerful position.

Whatever might be the reason for this military coup, world powers too are now part of the power struggle that is going on in West Africa. The military ruler in Niger is trying to get support from Russia and China to survive in this polarized and volatile situation. The Nigeria-led and Western-backed Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has threatened to launch a military offensive against the military government of Niger.

The (ECOWAS) has given August 25 as the deadline to restore the president Muhammad Bazoum to avoid a military confrontation. Nigeria and Senegal are threatening to invade Niger while Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Algeria are opposing any military intervention from ECOWAS. This situation can lead to a regional war involving different West African countries.

The governments of Mali and Burkina Faso have announced that “military intervention against Niger would be tantamount to a declaration of war” against those nations, while Guinea has come out in support of the coup and has refused to carry out sanctions. Two regional blocs have now effectively emerged, threatening further conflict and instability.

A regional war involving Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger will bring more destruction, poverty, hunger, deaths and political and economic instability to the region. The US, France and other European powers are opposing the military coup in Niger while Russia and China are backing the military government.

Four successful and two failed military coups have already occurred in the region since 2020. Fears are growing in the region that military coups might spread to other countries. The pro-West governments in West Africa, especially the governments of Nigeria and Senegal, are accusing Russia and China of supporting military coups. Critics say that they wanted to prove to their former colonial powers that they are ready to go to any extent to protect and further their economic, strategic and political interests in the region.

Having suffered setbacks across the so-called ‘coup belt’, stretching from Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east, Western imperialism and its local allies are clearly in a state of panic and are looking for means to defend their interests in the region. In the case of Niger, France stands to lose the most. France has retained a tight grip over Niger’s economy, even since formal independence was won in 1960, and has 1,500 troops stationed in the country. France produces nearly 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power plants and cannot afford any disruption of uranium supply. Niger is crucial for France in this regard.

Since 2010, there have been over 40 coups and attempted coups in Africa; some 20 occurred in West Africa and the Sahel (including Chad). Since 2019 there have been seven (five successful and two failed) attempts.

Between 1958 and 2008, most coups in Africa occurred in former French colonies, as did six of the seven since 2019. Similarly, 12 of the 20 coups in the sub-region since 2010 happened there.

The socio-economic conditions that the colonial powers created over the years in these countries are suitable for military coups. Africa has a long history of military coups and counter-coups, having experienced both leftwing and reactionary coups since the 1950s. During the cold war between the Soviet Union and Western imperialism, Africa suffered the most – many countries plunged into bloody civil wars and millions became victims of proxy wars. Military coups will keep coming until socio-economic conditions are changed in the region.

READ ORIGINAL ESSAY HERE

Geneva Appeals Court Upholds Conviction Of Israeli Tycoon

FILE - Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz arrives to a courthouse in Geneva, Switzerland, on Aug. 29, 2022. A Geneva appeals court on Tuesday April 4, 2023 upheld the conviction of Steinmetz for corrupting foreign officials, in connection with lucrative mining rights in the West African country of Guinea. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

BY JAMEY KEATEN

GENEVA (AP) — A Geneva appeals court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz for corrupting foreign officials, in connection with lucrative mining rights in the West African country of Guinea.

The court, issuing its ruling after a trial last summer, upheld the convictions of Steinmetz and two other defendants for bribing foreign public officials over promises made to then-President Lansana Conte through payments to his wife, Mamadie Toure, that came to be worth about $8.5 million. The court also upheld a $50 million fine against the Israeli tycoon, but it threw out a conviction for forgery and reduced his sentence from five years to three, half of it suspended.

Steinmetz, in a statement via a spokesperson, vowed to appeal the “unfair and politically motivated decision” to the Swiss federal court.

“Beny Steinmetz considers that the Geneva justice system turned a blind eye to procedural flaws, stretched the rules of jurisdiction, compensated for the lack of evidence, and misused the penal code to save a conviction that it did not dare to dismiss,” it said, adding that Steinmetz and his legal team “continue to consider that Geneva has no legitimacy to judge him.”

The case involved an alleged plot, dating to the mid-2000s, in which Steinmetz’s BSGR Group squeezed out a rival for mining rights for vast iron ore deposits in Guinea’s southeastern Simandou region. The case exposed the shady, complex world of deal-making and the cutthroat competition in the lucrative mining business.

The prosecutor’s office argued that from 2005 onward, Steinmetz crafted a pact of corruption with Conte, who ruled the West African country from 1984 until his death in 2008, and Toure.

Steinmetz’s legal team had argued that state prosecutors had deliberately excluded defense teams from any pretrial questioning of Toure in the United States, where she lives. She has reached an agreement with U.S. authorities in the case.

In its court filing, the prosecutor’s office said BSGR won exploration and exploitation licenses in Guinea between 2006 and 2010 in Guinea’s Simandou region, while its competitor — Anglo-Australian mining group Rio Tinto — was stripped of its mining rights on two sites in the region.

Steinmetz’s team said mountains in the area hold some of the world’s largest untapped deposits of iron ore, and the standoff stifled any hopes to reap them — and offer a potential windfall for an impoverished country. They say BSGR was first to study the feasibility of mining iron ore in the area.

The appeals court said the award of the mining rights allowed Steinmetz’s company to strike a $2.5 billion joint venture with a Brazilian firm, of which 500 million were “immediately cashed in” — while his company had invested $160 million to develop the project.

Guinea’s Ex-Junta Leader Testifies About Stadium Massacre

FILE- Former Guinea military coup leader Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara takes part in independence day celebrations in Conakry, Guinea, Oct. 2, 2009. Camara took the stand for the first time Monday Dec. 12, 2022 to testify for his role in a stadium massacre by the military that left at least 157 people dead and dozens of women raped 13 years ago. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File)

BY BOUBACAR DIALLO

CONAKRY, GUINEA (AP) — Guinea’s former junta leader Moussa “Dadis” Camara, took the stand for the first time Monday to testify about his role in a stadium massacre by the military 13 years ago in which at least 157 people were killed and dozens of women raped.

Camara is one of 11 men charged with the murders and rapes in the stadium attack on Sept. 28, 2009 in which security forces fired at unarmed demonstrators protesting the junta leader’s plans to run for president. Camara had seized power in a coup one year earlier.

Human rights investigators interviewed witnesses and reported that Camara’s aides were at the stadium and did nothing to stop the violence. Witnesses said that the presidential guard blocked the exits and then entered the stadium and opened fire.

Several months later Camara survived an assassination attempt and fled to Burkina Faso where he lived in exile for more than a decade before returning to stand trial in Guinea.

Dressed in a garment of woven Burkina Faso cloth, Camara sounded nervous and bitter as he pleaded his innocence in front of a packed courtroom of several hundred people.

“If I’m here before you it’s because of my patriotism otherwise I would not have agreed to come,” he said. Camara said he was sleeping during the early hours of the attack, awoken at 11 a.m. when he was told that demonstrators had been killed.

As commander in chief at the time, rights groups say Camara has to take responsibility for what happened.

“They surely (acted) on this order. It is up to him to prove that he did not give the order and took the necessary measures to prevent the massacre,” said Alseny Sall, communications officer for the Defense of Human Rights and Citizenship, a local rights group. “Simply saying that he is innocent is not enough, it must be motivated by clear and precise explanations,” he said.

Camara says he was the target of an assassination plot by former President Alpha Conde who was ousted in a coup last year.

For years, Guinea’s government sought to prevent Camara’s return, fearing it could stoke political instability. However, another coup last year put a military junta in power that was more amenable to Camara’s repatriation.

Camara is the 9th accused to testify with two people remaining. The trial is expected to last at least until the end of the month.

Meanwhile, families of the victims say they believe justice will prevail.

“Eventually the truth will be known,” said Aissatou Sow. The 34-year-old’s fiancee was killed during the attack. “I did not want him to go to the stadium that day. I said it is dangerous and he told me not to be afraid,” she said.

Guinea Junta Agrees With Bloc To Hold Vote In Early 2025

FILE - Guinea's junta leader Col. Mamady Doumbouya watches over an independence day military parade in Bamako, Mali on Sept. 22, 2022. The government led by Guinea's coup leader reached an agreement late Friday, Oct. 21, 2022 with West African regional mediators on a schedule for holding new elections a little over two years from now. (AP Photo, File)

BY BOUBAKAR DIALLO

CONAKRY, GUINEA (AP) — The government led by Guinea’s coup leader reached an agreement late Friday with West African regional mediators on a schedule for holding new elections a little over two years from now.

The regional bloc known as ECOWAS has spent more than a year negotiating with Col. Mamady Doumbouya’s government following the September 2021 coup and had imposed sanctions on the junta leadership. It was not immediately known how soon those might be lifted.

The junta initially proposed a three-year transition, which was rejected by the regional mediators who already had obtained two-year transition deals after similar coups in both Mali and Burkina Faso. Guinea’s two-year clock starts in January, with elections then due in early 2025.

For some, the news was bittersweet as demonstrations protesting the duration of the transition in Guinea have turned deadly, including three killed Thursday.

“It took more than 17 deaths to reach a consensus,” complained Aly Baldé, whose brother was shot dead in Conakry.

Guinea became the second country hit by a recent coup in West Africa, a little over a year after Mali’s military junta overthrew that country’s democratically elected ruler. Since then, Burkina Faso has seen two coups of its own.

Burkina Faso and Mali already have agreed with ECOWAS on election dates — Mali’s is scheduled to be held by March 2024, but the situation in Burkina Faso is now in doubt after the latest coup there.

A deal had been reached with the man who first toppled Burkina Faso’s president in January to hold a vote by July 2024. But it remains to be seen whether Capt. Ibrahim Traore, who seized power on Sept. 30, will fully honor that agreement.

ECOWAS has said that Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso will all remain suspended from the bloc until elections are held.

Beyond setting dates, ECOWAS also has expressed concerns about what shape the future elections will take and whether the coup leaders turned interim presidents will be allowed to run as candidates.

Earlier this month, Doumbouya reiterated that neither he nor any member of the junta or the transitional government would take part in the eventual elections now due by January 2025.

Doumbouya emerged as the leader after mutinous soldiers overthrew President Alpha Conde last year.

Conde had won a landmark 2010 election after decades of dictatorship and strongman rule in Guinea, only to eventually try to seek a third term in office. He claimed the country’s term limits did not apply to him. While he succeeded in winning a third term, he was overthrown nine months later.

___

Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

Guinea Sets Trial Date 13 Years After 2009 Stadium Massacre

                                                                                      

BY BOUBAKAR DIALLO

CONAKRY, GUINEA (AP) — Guinea will try the alleged perpetrators of a 2009 stadium massacre that killed at least 157 people and left dozens of women raped, the justice minister announced Friday, drawing praise from victims’ families who have waited nearly 13 years.

Justice Minister Charles Alphonse Wright said he hoped the trial — set to begin on this year’s anniversary of the Sept. 28 massacre — “will revisit our history, our past, that we all emerge from this trial with a new vision of our Guinea.”

More than a dozen suspects including former junta leader Moussa “Dadis” Camara have been charged with crimes in connection to the massacre, but years had passed without a trial date ever being set. Last year, human rights groups complained there was “an evident lack of will to complete preparations.”

“This date that we have been waiting for a long time has come today. It was time for this trial to take place,” said Bissiri Diallo, who lost her 18-year-old son in the massacre. “We hope that all the truths will come out.”

“The death of my child at the stadium on Sept. 28, 2009 has extinguished forever a light in my soul,” she added. “I don’t feel any joy, any desire to live since that day. I hope that this trial will rekindle this light in my soul.”

Security forces that day opened fire at a stadium in Conakry where people were protesting then-coup leader Camara’s plans to run for president. Camara fled into exile after he survived an assassination attempt several months after the stadium massacre. Last year he finally returned to Conakry, where he told supporters he had faith in the country’s justice system and was “fully prepared to tell my part of the truth.”

For years Guinea’s government had sought to prevent his homecoming, fearing it could stoke political instability. However, another coup last year put a military junta in power that was more amenable to Camara’s return.

Camara’s junta says “uncontrolled” elements of the army carried out the rapes and killings. But Camara’s top aides were at the stadium and did nothing to stop the mass killings and rapes, a Human Rights Watch report said.

Human Rights Watch said its investigation showed that Camara’s red-bereted presidential guard surrounded the stadium where opposition supporters had gathered and blocked the exits. The troops entered and immediately opened fire on the crowd with AK-47s as panicked demonstrators tried to flee.

Many were crushed to death, while others were gunned down as they tried to scale the stadium’s walls.

Human Rights Watch also has said dozens of women were seized from the stadium where the Sept. 28 massacre took place and from clinics in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, where they were seeking medical treatment. They were driven in military vehicles to villas, where they were gang-raped by uniformed men over several days.

Guinea’s 2008 Coup Leader Returns Home From Exile

MOUSSA DADIS CAMARA

BY BOUBAKAR DIALLO

CONAKRY, GUINEA (AP) — The man who led a 2008 coup in Guinea and whose brief rule was marked by a stadium massacre against peaceful demonstrators returned to the West African country Wednesday after more than a decade in exile in Burkina Faso.

Moussa “Dadis” Camara left the country in December 2009 after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt carried out by one of his own bodyguards. For years the government had sought to prevent his homecoming, fearing it could stoke political instability.

However, another coup earlier this year in Guinea put a military junta in power that was more amenable to Camara’s return.

Camara’s plane touched down Wednesday at the airport in Conakry.

Camara, now 57, was a little-known army captain when he seized power in Guinea in December 2008 just hours after the death of longtime dictator Lansana Conte had been announced on state television.

By the following September, opposition to the ruling junta had deepened. And during a peaceful anti-junta demonstration that month at a soccer stadium, Camara’s soldiers fired upon the crowd, killing at least 157 people, according to U.N. figures.

It remains unclear whether Camara could face criminal charges in connection with the massacre. However, to date, no trial has ever been held for the perpetrators of the violence, during which dozens of women also were gang-raped, according to human rights groups.

Camara’s exile after he was shot in the head eventually paved the way for Guinea’s first democratic elections since independence from France, which put Alpha Conde in power.

The ex-coup leader did manage to make a brief visit to Guinea in 2013 to attend his mother’s funeral, crossing at a land border with Liberia. But Guinean authorities have resisted Camara’s permanent return, fearing it could stoke political tensions.

When Camara tried to visit Conakry in 2015, Conde forced him to deplane on a layover in Abidjan before the commercial flight could continue to Guinea’s capital.

Now Conde has been forced from power by another military junta and remains in their custody. First elected in the landmark 2010 vote, Conde saw his popularity sink over the decade he was in power, particularly after he ran for a third term and said term limits did not apply to him. He ultimately won re-election in October 2020, only to be deposed in the military coup less than a year later.

Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.

Guinea Protest Leaders Sentenced To Jail For Opposing President

Guinea President Alpha Conde. Image: Wikipedia

BY OYIN ADEKUNLE

Five opposition and civil society leaders in Guinea have been sentenced to prison for organizing protests against a possible change to the constitution that could let President Alpha Conde seek a third term.

Abdourahmane Sanoh, a former government minister and an organizer of the protests, received a one-year jail term for inciting civil disobedience.

Four other members of the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), received six-month sentences while three others were acquitted.

Both the defense and the prosecution, which had been seeking five-year sentences, said they are planning to appeal the sentence.

Last month, 81-year-old Conde, whose second and final five-year term expires next year, asked his government to look into drafting a new constitution, a move his opponent fears will enable him to seek re-election.

During last week’s demonstrations in the capital Conakry and several opposition strongholds in the north, police opened fire on protesters as they raided military posts and blocked roads with burning tyres. At least nine people were killed in the clashes.

SOURCE: TV 360 NIGERIA

A Harvard Doctor Just Won $1 Million For A Project That Could Prevent The Next Deadly Pandemic

BY ARIEL SCHWARTZ

BUSINESS INSIDER

Raj Panjabi getting his blood pressure checked by a community health worker

Before the Ebola virus ravaged West Africa, killing thousands and leaving entire towns reeling, it started small. The virus wound its way out of a rainforest-adjacent village in Guinea and spread through other rural areas in Liberia and Sierra Leone, going undetected for months. By the time the world realized what was happening, it was too late to stop the virus's spread.

It's hard to find outbreaks if people aren't actively looking for them. And in rural communities across the world, people lack access to healthcare workers who might be able to detect future Ebola outbreaks — or on a more regular basis, help diagnose and treat problems like pneumonia, malaria and diarrhea.

Dr. Raj Panjabi just won the $1 million TED Prize for an idea that could dramatically increase the number of paid community health workers around the world. The prize is given each year at the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada to make the recipient's "big wish" a reality.

Panjabi is a physician at Harvard Medical School and the co-founder and CEO of Last Mile Health, an organization that expands access to healthcare in remote areas through the hiring of professional community health workers. Panjabi tells Business Insider that he wants to "recruit and train the largest army of community health workers that's ever been known."

He calls his concept the Community Health Academy.

"I want to help countries where they're already working on this to do it at a higher quality and lower cost, to create and curate the best in digital education resources, and to [use] self-learning and online courses to recognize the next outbreak," he says.

All of these steps could reduce unnecessary deaths from treatable diseases and potentially prevent future pandemics, according to Panjabi.

Panjabi grew up in Monrovia, Liberia. He lived what he calls a normal childhood as a math and science geek, until civil war erupted when he was nine years old. The war sent hundreds of thousands of families fleeing, and Panjabi's family ended up moving to North Carolina.

"I wanted to go back to see if I could contribute to serving those we left behind," he says. When Panjabi returned to Liberia in 2005, he discovered the country had the one of the biggest doctor shortages in the world, with just 51 doctors for four million people. The physicians available to see patients were clustered in urban areas, forcing many rural residents to travel over a day to get care.

That's why he started Last Mile Health in 2007 — to bring healthcare to rural areas at a low cost by training paid community health workers to detect and treat diseases. "I believe no one should have to die in the 21st century from lack of access to a doctor or a clinic," he says.

Last Mile Health came into existence at the right time, technologically speaking, since smartphones have made it easier than ever to access medical knowledge without a degree or a lab.

Panjabi gives the example of a child with a shortness of breath. A healthcare worker could check to see if the child has a fever with a digital thermometer, count their breaths using the phone as a smartwatch, and come away knowing whether the child is likely to have pneumonia.

In the next year, Panjabi hopes to use his TED Prize money to set up online training courses for community health workers across the globe. He wants to start in countries with the most dire healthcare shortages (like Liberia).

Online education platform EdX has already committed to working with Last Mile Health on the project. The next step after that is to work with ministries of health in various countries to set up official certifications for trained health workers.

"If we can't understand the value they bring, their labor is undervalued. This would help countries measure training competencies," he says.

Ultimately, Panjabi believes community health work is both an economic and a national security issue. By hiring health workers, governments can create much-needed jobs in rural areas. And as the recent Ebola outbreak revealed, blind spots in rural healthcare lead to diseases that threaten people all over the world.
"You can't bomb Ebola," he says.

Israel Renews Ties With Largely Muslim Nation Guinea

BY CARA ANNA

ASSOCIATED PRESS, JULY 20, 2016

President Alpha Conde Of Guinea

Israel said Wednesday it has renewed diplomatic ties with the largely Muslim African country of Guinea, the latest step in Israel's courtship of the continent, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expected another nation to soon follow suit.

Israel's foreign ministry announced that the countries restored ties after 49 years. The director of Israel's foreign ministry, Dore Gold, signed an agreement in Paris with the chief of staff of Guinea's presidential office, Ibrahim Khalil Kaba.

The news comes after Netanyahu's four-nation Africa tour this month. It was the first visit to sub-Saharan Africa by a sitting Israeli prime minister in nearly three decades.

"This is part of a process that is gaining momentum, and it is very important. It is opening Israel up to Africa," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Israel is pursuing closer security and other ties with Africa, and it wants African states to support it at the United Nations. where the Palestinians were recognized as a non-member observer state in 2012.

The new agreement says Guinea was the first country to cut ties with Israel after the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel captured the West Bank. east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip from its Arab foes.

It also says Guinea and Israel have had friendly relations even in the absence of diplomatic ties. Israel took part in the international effort to halt the recent Ebola virus outbreak, which hit the West African country hard.

Israel said the number of African countries with which it doesn't have diplomatic ties is shrinking, and it hopes others will follow Guinea's example.

Israel's foreign ministry lists several Muslim or largely Muslim countries that have no current ties with it. Many are in northern and West Africa.


Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed.

Malaria Killing Thousands More Than Ebola In West Africa

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Blair's left, and Religion Leaders hold a Mosquito net with a women lying inside to demonstrate the use of the net against malaria in Abuja, Nigeria. The operation to fight Ebola in West Africa has hampered the campaigns against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands of lives. In information released Sunday Dec. 28, 2014, Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative says they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria, so statistics show a decrease in reported cases of maleria but the decrease is likely because people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria.

GUECKEDOU, Guinea (AP) — West Africa's fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus.

In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea's tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.

Guinea's drop in reported malaria cases this year by as much as 40 percent is not good news, said Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative. He said the decrease is likely because people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria.

"It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic," he said in a telephone interview. "I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children."

Figures are always estimates in Guinea, where half the 12 million people have no access to health centers and die uncounted. Some 15,000 Guineans died from malaria last year, 14,000 of them children under five, according to Nets for Life Africa, a New York-based charity dedicated to providing insecticide-treated mosquito nets to put over beds. In comparison, about 1,600 people in Guinea have died from Ebola, according to statistics from the World Health Organization.

Malaria is the leading cause of death in children under five in Guinea and, after AIDS, the leading cause of adult deaths, according to Nets for Life. Ebola and malaria have many of the same symptoms, including fever, dizziness, head and muscle aches. Malaria is caused by bites from infected mosquitoes while Ebola can be contracted only from the body fluids of an infected victim — hence doctors' fears of drawing blood to do malaria tests.

People suffering malaria fear being quarantined in Ebola treatment centers and health centers not equipped to treat Ebola are turning away patients with Ebola-like symptoms, doctors said. WHO figures from Gueckedou show that of people coming in with fever in October, 24 percent who tested positive for Ebola also tested positive for malaria, and 33 percent of those who did not have Ebola tested positive for malaria — an indication of the great burden of malaria in Guinea.

Malaria killed one of 38 Cuban doctors sent to Guinea to help fight the Ebola outbreak. One private hospital had a kidney dialysis machine that could have saved his failing organ but the clinic was shut after several people died there of Ebola.

The U.S. President's Malaria Initiative ground to a halt in Guinea months ago and the WHO in November advised health workers against testing for malaria unless they have protective gear. The malaria initiative is doing a national survey of health facilities and elsewhere to try to find out "what's actually happening here ... where people with malaria are going," said Nahlen, of the U.S. campaign. There was some positive news in Guinea — it had just completed a national mosquito net campaign against malaria when Ebola struck, he said.

Neighboring Liberia, on the other hand, suspended the planned distribution of 2 million nets, said Nahlen. In Sierra Leone, the third country hard-hit by Ebola, Doctors Without Borders took unprecedented, pre-emptive action this month, distributing 1.5 million antimalarial drugs that can be used to both prevent and treat, aiming to protect people during the disease's peak season.

"Most people turn up at Ebola treatment centers thinking that they have Ebola, when actually they have malaria," said Patrick Robataille, Doctors Without Borders field coordinator in Freetown. "It's a huge load on the system, as well as being a huge stress on patients and their families."

He said a second distribution is planned in Freetown and western areas most affected by Ebola. Robataille said the huge delivery of antimalarial drugs was "in proportion to the scale of the Ebola epidemic — it's massive."

US To Track Everyone Coming From Ebola Nations

Passengers stand, most waiting for incoming flights, in the arrivals area at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York. Starting Monday, Oct. 27, travelers and from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will have  to report in with health officials daily and take their temperature twice a day.

ATLANTA (AP) — All travelers who come into the U.S. from three Ebola-stricken West African nations will now be monitored for three weeks, the latest step by federal officials to keep the disease from spreading into the country.

Starting Monday, anyone traveling from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will have to report in with health officials daily and take their temperature twice a day. The measure applies not only to visitors from those countries but also returning American aid workers, federal health employees and journalists. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the new step Wednesday.

CDC Director Tom Frieden said monitoring will provide an extra level of safety. Passengers already get screened and temperature checks before they leave West Africa and again when they arrive in the United States.

"We have to keep our guard up," Frieden told reporters on a conference call. The Obama administration has resisted increasing pressure to turn away any visitors from the three countries at the center of the Ebola outbreak, especially after a Liberian visitor to Dallas came down with the infectious disease days after he arrived and later died. Instead, passenger screening was put in place at 5 key U.S. airports. That was tightened Tuesday to funnel everyone coming from those countries through those airports so all are checked.

The monitoring program will start in six states — New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia — the destination for the bulk of the travelers from the outbreak region. It will later extend to other states.

Each passenger will be required to provide contact information for themselves as well as a friend or relative. They will be instructed to check for a fever twice a day and report their temperature and any symptoms to health officials daily for 21 days.

How the checks are done — in person, by phone or Skype — will be decided by the states, Frieden said. If a traveler does not report in, public health officials can track them down. How far they can go to get them to cooperate is up to those officials, CDC officials said.

They will also receive "CARE" kits — the name stands for Check and Report Ebola. The kits include a thermometer and instructions on what to do if symptoms occur. Also included is a card to present to health care providers if they seek care.

CDC already was telling its own employees and other health professionals returning from the outbreak zone to monitor their temperature. It can take up to 21 days to develop symptoms, which include fever, headache, muscle aches, vomiting and diarrhea.

Earlier this year, roughly 150 travelers to the U.S. each day were from the three countries. But it appears there are far fewer now — there are no direct flights and flights to the area have been curtailed. New York's Kennedy airport — which handles the most traffic — has averaged 34 a day since screening began Oct. 11.

The other airports are Washington's Dulles, Newark's Liberty, Chicago's O'Hare and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson. While a few of the people screened thus far have been taken to the hospital, none had the infectious disease.

According to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday, Americans are worried about Ebola spreading here, and many say the government hasn't done enough to prevent that from happening. The poll found a surprising 9 out of 10 people think it's very necessary to tighten screening procedures.

Some would go even further: Three-quarters think it's definitely or probably necessary to prevent everyone traveling from places affected by Ebola from entering the U.S. On Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president has been following advice from scientists that a travel ban could do more harm than good. Health officials fear travelers will just find alternate routes and spark harder-to-trace outbreaks.

Many health experts agree that a travel ban is a bad idea. But one faulted the CDC for being slow to institute the daily monitoring. Monitoring can't stop Ebola from coming in, "but we'll have a better chance" to quickly identify and isolate cases, said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a Virginia Commonwealth University scientist who formerly led the International Society for Infectious Diseases

Such tracking measures might have made a difference in the case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who became the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Wenzel said. Duncan wasn't sick and passed the screening when he left Liberia. He didn't develop symptoms until after his arrival. He died Oct. 8.

Two nurses who took care of him at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital were infected; both remain hospitalized. The family of one nurse, Amber Vinson, said Wednesday that tests show the Ebola virus can no longer be detected; the Atlanta hospital where she is being treated wouldn't release any information.

Maryland's health secretary said it will depend on individual circumstances how closely the state monitors people. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein said the approach will recognize "that some people who come from West Africa are at a higher risk than others." The CDC isn't mandating that everyone be watched the same way, he said.

Also on Wednesday, an American video journalist who has recovered from Ebola was being released from a Nebraska hospital. He caught it while working in Liberia. "Today is a joyful day," Ashoka Mukpo said in a statement issued by the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He arrived Oct. 6.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama brought together top aides and his new Ebola coordinator Ron Klain. After their meeting, Obama gave assurances that hospitals across the country were becoming better prepared in the event they have to deal with cases of Ebola.

The virus has killed more than 4,800 people in West Africa, nearly all in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Associated Press writers Michael Felberbaum in Richmond and Connie Cass, Alicia Caldwell, Ben Nuckols and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington contributed to this report.

Ebola: Providing Time To Fight The Virus

Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks at a news conference in Atlanta. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — People who shared an apartment with the country's first Ebola patient are emerging from quarantine healthy. And while Thomas Eric Duncan died and two U.S. nurses were infected caring for him, there are successes, too: A nurse infected in Spain has recovered, as have four American aid workers infected in West Africa. Even there, not everyone dies.

So why do some people escape Ebola, and not others? The end of quarantine for 43 people in Dallas who had contact with Duncan "simply supports what most of us who know something about the disease have been saying all along: It's not that easily spread," said Dr. Joseph McCormick of the University of Texas School of Public Health. Formerly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, McCormick worked on the first known Ebola outbreak in 1976 and numerous other outbreaks of Ebola and related hemorrhagic viruses.

Ebola spreads by contact with bodily fluids, such as through a break in the skin or someone with contaminated hands touching the eyes or nose. Once inside the body, Ebola establishes a foothold by targeting the immune system's first line of defense, essentially disabling its alarms. The virus rapidly reproduces, infecting multiple kinds of cells before the immune system recognizes the threat and starts to fight back.

Only after enough virus is produced do symptoms appear, starting with fever, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. And only then is someone contagious. It's not clear why Ebola runs a different course in different people. But how rapidly symptoms appear depends partly on how much virus a patient was initially exposed to, McCormick said.

The World Health Organization has made clear that there's far more virus in blood, vomit and feces than in other bodily fluids. There is no specific treatment for Ebola but specialists say basic supportive care — providing intravenous fluids and nutrients, and maintaining blood pressure — is crucial to give the body time to fight off the virus.

Profuse vomiting and diarrhea can cause dehydration. Worse, in the most severe cases, patients' blood vessels start to leak, causing blood pressure to drop to dangerous levels and fluid to build up in the lungs.

"The key issue is balance between keeping their blood pressure up by giving them fluids, and not pushing them into pulmonary edema where they're literally going to drown," McCormick said. Death usually is due to shock and organ failure.

"We depend on the body's defenses to control the virus," said Dr. Bruce Ribner, who runs the infectious disease unit at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital, which successfully treated three aid workers with Ebola and now is treating one of the Dallas nurses.

"We just have to keep the patient alive long enough in order for the body to control this infection," he said. What about experimental treatments? Doctors at Emory and Nebraska Medical Center, which successfully treated another aid worker and now is treating a video journalist infected in West Africa, say there's no way to know if those treatment really helped. Options include a plasma transfusion, donated by Ebola survivors who have antibodies in their blood able to fight Ebola, or a handful of experimental drugs that are in short supply.

But survival also can depend on how rapidly someone gets care. It also may be affected by factors beyond anyone's control: McCormick's research suggests it partly depends on how the immune system reacts early on — whether too many white blood cells die before they can fight the virus. Other research has linked genetic immune factors to increased survival.

Ebola Deflating Hopes For 3 Poor African Economies

People do business at the Waterside local market in the center of Monrovia, Liberia. Just as their economies had begun to recover from the man-made horror of coups and civil war, the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been knocked back down by the Ebola virus.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just as their economies had begun to recover from the man-made horror of coups and civil war, the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been knocked back down by a terrifying force of nature: the Ebola virus.

In addition to the human toll — more than 4,000 dead so far — the outbreak has paralyzed economic life. Across the Ebola zone, shops are closed, hotels vacant, flights cancelled, fields untended, investments on hold.

In Conakry, capital of Guinea, stray dogs, goats and sheep are plopping down next to empty stalls in street markets devoid of shoppers. About the only things people want to buy are products meant to guard against Ebola — antiseptic gels and devices that attach to faucets and add chlorine to the water.
"These are selling like bread at the market," said Cece Loua, who sells pharmaceutical products in Conakry. The World Bank has dramatically downgraded its expectations for economic growth this year in the three countries hardest hit by the outbreak. Guinea will grow 2.4 percent, down from a previously forecast 4.5 percent, it predicts; Liberia 2.5 percent, down from 5.9 percent; and Sierra Leone 8 percent, down from 11.3 percent.

"It's been really devastating," said Rosa Whitaker, CEO of the consultancy the Whitaker Group and a former U.S. trade official. It's an especially cruel turn for three impoverished economies that had been making steady progress after years of devastating conflict:

— In Sierra Leone, which endured a civil war from 1991 to 2002 that killed 70,000 and left 2.6 million homeless, the economy surged 20 percent last year and 15 percent in 2012. — Liberia, which lost 250,000 people to civil wars from 1989 to 2003, has recorded double-digit economic growth four of the past five years.

— Guinea, with a history of bloody coups and political strife, has grown more slowly (2.5 percent last year and 3.9 percent in 2012), but had expected its economy to accelerate as foreign companies invested in such projects as the Simandou iron ore mine.

"No one could have imagined the extent of the economic and social turnaround," said Steven Radelet, a foreign aid expert at Georgetown University and an adviser to the Liberian government. "The past 10 years, there's been remarkable progress, and a lot of investors coming in."

Ebola has frozen the economic revival. "They were coming back and now have been set back in a big way," said Francisco Ferreira, the World Bank's chief economist for Africa. The epidemic damages the economy directly. Commerce stops. The sick can't work. Contaminated areas close down. Tax collections dry up. Health care costs swell, squeezing governments already struggling with expenses.
But the indirect damage can be even worse as fear paralyzes Ebola-stricken communities. "People are obviously very afraid of it," Ferreira said. "People stay home and don't consume... Flights are being canceled because no one wants to go there. Hotels are firing people because no one is staying there."
Liberia canceled soccer games because it's "a contact sport, and Ebola is spread through sweat," said Musa Bility, president of the Liberia Football Association. The suspension of sporting events has hurt Boima Folley's sporting goods shop in the Liberian capital Monrovia.

"No one comes to even ask for — let alone buy — sports materials these days," he said. Analysts are at least optimistic that the economic damage from the crisis can be contained to the hardest-hit countries. The three Ebola-stricken nations are, after all, economically small, and their troubles are unlikely to disrupt commerce beyond their borders: Combined, their three economies amount to half the size of Vermont's.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that the 25 African countries it has grouped as "low-income"— including the three most hit by Ebola — would register a combined 6.3 percent economic growth this year, faster than the 6.1 percent in 2013.

One factor in Africa's favor: Nigeria, West Africa's dominant economy, and Senegal moved decisively to identify and isolate Ebola victims and those who had come into contact with them. "We're incredibly impressed by the ability of Nigeria and Senegal to keep their epidemics contained," Ferreira said.

The World Bank still fears a worst-case scenario in which Ebola breaks out of three countries and spreads across West Africa. Under that scenario, economic losses across West Africa would rise as high as $32.6 billion this year and next, up from no more than $9 billion if the disease were contained.

Continent-wide, Africa has made significant strides. Six of the world's fastest-growing economies are in Africa, the White House reported at an August U.S.-Africa Summit meant to celebrate the continent's rise.

Most analysts think Africa's overall economy will continue to expand. The momentum remains strong, and damage from Ebola still seems likely to be contained. "I don't think there will be lasting damage," said Anna Rosenberg, head of Frontier Strategy Group's sub-Saharan Africa practice. "The growth story coming out of sub-Saharan Africa is too big and too real to be ignored. There's nothing that is going to stop it going forward."

Diallo reported from Conakry, Guinea. AP Writers Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington and Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia, contributed to this report.

Stepped-Up Ebola Screening Starts At NYC Airport

Graphic explains the non-contact thermometers; 2c x 4 inches; 96.3 mm x 101 mm;

NEW YORK (AP) — Customs and health officials began taking the temperatures of passengers arriving at New York's Kennedy International Airport from three West African countries on Saturday in a stepped-up screening effort meant to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.

Federal health officials said the entry screenings, which will expand to four additional U.S. airports in the next week, add another layer of protection to halt the spread of a disease that has killed more than 4,000 people.

"Already there are 100 percent of the travelers leaving the three infected countries are being screened on exit. Sometimes multiple times temperatures are checked along that process," Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine for the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said at a briefing at Kennedy.

Cetron added, "No matter how many procedures are put into place, we can't get the risk to zero." The screening will be expanded over the next week to four other airports: New Jersey's Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.

Customs officials say about 150 people travel daily from or through Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea to the United States, and nearly 95 percent of them land first at one of the five airports. Public health workers use no-touch thermometers to take the temperatures of the travelers from the three Ebola-ravaged countries; those who have a fever will be interviewed to determine whether they may have had contact with someone infected with Ebola. There are quarantine areas at each of the five airports that can be used if necessary.

There are no direct flights to the U.S. from the three countries, but Homeland Security officials said last week they can track passengers back to where their trips began, even if they make several stops. Airlines from Morocco, France and Belgium are still flying in and out of West Africa.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the new screening measures are "really just belt and suspenders" to support protections already in place. Border Patrol agents already look for people who are obviously ill, as do flight crews.

Health officials expect false alarms from travelers who have fever from other illnesses. Ebola isn't contagious until symptoms begin, and it spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of patients.

Cetron said more than 36,000 travelers leaving West Africa have been screened for Ebola in the last two months and none was infected with Ebola. The extra screening at U.S. airports probably wouldn't have identified Thomas Eric Duncan when he arrived from Liberia last month because he had no symptoms while traveling. Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., died Wednesday in Dallas.

Experts say the federal government has broad authority to screen passengers and quarantine them if necessary. The CDC cited as legal authority the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, under which the government regulates trade with foreign countries. The 1944 Public Health Service Act also allows the federal government to take action to prevent communicable diseases, which include viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, from spreading into the country.

WHO: Ebola Death Toll Rises To More Than 4,000

A Nigerian port health official uses a thermometer on a passenger at the arrivals hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. The Obama administration’s plans to screen certain airline passengers for exposure to Ebola are based on the Constitution and long-established legal authority that would almost certainly stand up in court if challenged, public health experts say. Airline passengers arriving from three West African countries will face temperature checks using no-touch thermometers and other screening measures at five U.S. airports, starting with New York’s Kennedy International on Saturday.

MONROVIA, LIBERIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Liberian lawmakers on Friday rejected a proposal to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the power to further restrict movement and public gatherings and to confiscate property in the fight against Ebola. One legislator said such a law would have turned Liberia into a police state.

The proposal's defeat came as the World Health Organization once again raised the death toll attributed to the Ebola outbreak. The Geneva-based U.N. agency said that 4,033 confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola deaths have now been recorded.


All but nine of them were in the three worst-affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Eight of the rest were in Nigeria, with one patient dying in the United States. On Friday, David Nabarro, the U.N. special envoy for Ebola, said the number of Ebola cases is probably doubling every three-to-four weeks and the response needs to be 20 times greater than it was at the beginning.
He warned the U.N. General Assembly that without the mass mobilization of the world to support the affected countries in West Africa, "it will be impossible to get this disease quickly under control, and the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever."

Nabarro said the U.N. knows what needs to be done to catch up to and overtake Ebola's rapid advance "and together we're going to do it." "And our commitment to all of you is to achieve it within a matter of months — a few months," he said.

The defeat of Sirleaf's proposal in the House of Representatives came as U.S. military forces worked on building a hospital for stricken health workers in Liberia, the country that has been hit hardest by the epidemic.

"The House felt it was not necessary to grant her additional measures," Speaker Alex Tyler told The Associated Press. He spoke after lawmakers rejected the president's proposal to give her further power to restrict movement and public gatherings and the authority to appropriate property "without payment of any kind or any further judicial process" to combat Ebola.

Liberia has recorded 2,316 deaths during the Ebola outbreak, according to the World Health Organization — more than any other country. Sirleaf's government imposed a three-month state of emergency beginning Aug. 6, but critics have accused the Nobel Peace Prize winner's approach to fighting Ebola since then as ineffective and heavy handed.

"I see a kind of police state creeping in," lawmaker Bhofal Chambers, a one-time Sirleaf supporter, said before the vote. In August, a quarantine of Monrovia's largest shantytown sparked unrest and was derided as counterproductive before being lifted. The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Sirleaf's government of trying to silence media outlets criticizing its conduct.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military was rushing to set up a 25-bed hospital to treat health workers who may contract Ebola. Rear Adm. Scott Giberson, the acting U.S. Deputy Surgeon General, said the facility would be ready within weeks.

"We're in training right now. As you may know, not everybody is fully experienced in seeing Ebola related care of patients," Giberson said. "We have experience deploying in lots of medical settings. However, this is unique."

The arrival of 100 U.S. Marines on Thursday brings to just over 300 the total number of American troops in Liberia. The Marines and their aircraft will help with air transportation and ferrying of supplies, overcoming road congestion in Monrovia and bad roads outside the capital, said Capt. R. Carter Langston, spokesman for the U.S. mission. A priority will be transporting building materials to treatment unit sites. The U.S. has said it will oversee construction of 17 treatment units with 100 beds each.

The 101st Airborne Division is expected to deploy 700 troops by late October. The U.S. may send up to 4,000 soldiers to help with the Ebola crisis, though officials have stressed that number could change depending on needs.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, USAID assistant administrator Nancy Lindborg said six treatment units were operational in Liberia. She said about 250 beds had come online in the last ten days or so, and that beds would come online in waves until the end of November.

In Mali, a health ministry spokesman said two more people had begun participating in the first phase of a study for a possible Ebola vaccine. Mali has not had any cases of Ebola, but it borders the outbreak zone. University of Maryland researchers announced Thursday that the first study of a possible vaccine was underway, and that three health care workers in Mali had received the experimental shots developed by the U.S. government.

"Today, we are at five people vaccinated," health ministry spokesman Markatie Daou said. "We envision vaccinating between 20 and 40 people for this first phase and the results are expected next month."

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, meanwhile, visited the Madrid hospital where a nursing assistant infected with Ebola is being treated. Teresa Romero was scheduled to start receiving the experimental anti-Ebola drug ZMapp, which is in extremely short supply worldwide, a spokeswoman for Madrid's regional health agency said on condition of anonymity because of agency rules.
Romero contracted Ebola in Madrid while helping treat a Spanish missionary who became infected in West Africa, and later died. She is the first person known outside of West Africa to have caught the disease in the current outbreak.

Rajoy praised Spanish health care workers and said the World Health Organization thinks "the risk is very low that this disease will spread in the future" in Spain and Europe. __ Corey-Boulet reported from Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Associated Press journalists Wade Williams in Monrovia, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, and Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali, contributed to this report.