INTERNATIONAL/WEST AFRICA – The newly appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, arrived this morning, Saturday, January 3^rd, 2015 in Accra, Ghana, where he officially begins his duties next week as head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed will be taking over for Mr. Anthony Banbury.

Speaking with UNMEER staff at a town hall meeting on January 3, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed praised their achievements but also noted the challenges in battling the deadly outbreak.

“This is a global crisis. We definitely have a difficult time ahead of us, but we can achieve it,” Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed said. “We have no plan B, we have to get rid of this virus. This is within our reach, but we should not be complacent.”

According to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) figures, there are 20,206 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola and 7,905 reported deaths.

“We need to keep going until we don't have even one case, because even one case is too many,” he said. “The work ahead remains very hard but we really have no other choice.”

Outgoing Head Anthony Banbury welcomed Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, saying, “Even while we face a lot of hard work in the days, weeks and months ahead, it's important to pause and think back to where we were when we started. There were predictions that there would be 1.4 million cases by now.”

Ould Cheikh Ahmed will be visiting Liberia and Sierra Leone next week, then Guinea shortly after, to reinforce UNMEER's strategic priorities and see first-hand the Ebola response. He will be accompanied by UN Special Envoy on Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro.

According to UNMEER, the three affected countries now have sufficient capacity to isolate and treat 100 percent of confirmed Ebola patients and enough burial teams to ensure safe and dignified burials for 100 percent of all deaths due to Ebola.

Before his new appointment, Ould Cheikh Ahmed served as Deputy Special Representative and Deputy Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).

INTERNATIONAL – Delivering his final press conference as head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), Anthony Banbury today pointed to significant progress in tackling the outbreak since he was appointed in September last year, while stressing that zero cases is the only acceptable outcome in the “big battle” with the disease.

“It’s important to remember where we were when we started,” Mr. Banbury told journalists in Accra, Ghana, where the Mission is headquartered. “At the time, there were predictions of up to 1.4 million cases of Ebola by the start of the year…Here we are in January and we have a total of around 20,000 cases instead of 1.4 million. That’s 1.4 per cent of what was being projected as a possibility by credible scientists back in September.”

As Mr. Banbury prepares to hand over the reins of UNMEER to Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Saturday, he was able to point to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) report on the epidemic, which counted 20,206 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola and 7,905 reported deaths.

His last trip to review progress in the three most affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone revealed an increased number of isolation beds in all three countries, with two beds per patient in Guinea, 3.5 in Sierra Leone, and 14 in Liberia.

With support from UNMEER and other partners, all three countries also have capacity sufficient to isolate and treat 100 per cent of confirmed Ebola patients and enough burial teams to ensure safe and dignified burials for 100 per cent of all deaths due to the disease.

Despite the progress, Mr. Banbury said several challenges remain, including the geographical dispersion of Ebola. There was also a need to change community behaviours and reduce resistance to the massive interventions attempted.

“We are engaged in a big battle with this disease,” he said. “It’s an insidious, invasive disease that attacks people through acts of caring and kindness…It’s going to be extremely hard for us to bring it down to zero but that is what we will do. That is the only acceptable outcome.”

According to Mr. Banbury, setting such ambitious targets is an “obligation” in order to bring the crisis to an end as quickly as possible. To achieve it, he said effective community engagement would be essential and underlined the need to maintain vigilance and commitment as the number of cases continues to drop.

“It’s a bit like putting seatbelts in cars,” he said. “If you have seatbelts in cars you can save a lot of lives, but only if people use those seatbelts.”

Stressing the “heavy responsibility” on the UN, he said that working with affected communities was a privilege.

UNMEER announced that Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed will be visiting the affected countries next week to reinforce the Mission’s strategic priorities. Before his new appointment, the Mauritanian national was Deputy Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya.

INTERNATIONAL – A senior United Nations refugee official today stressed the need for urgent action by European nations to protect migrants at sea following recent incidents involving hundreds of people stranded in the Mediterranean while attempting to reach the continent.

Vincent Cochetel, Europe Bureau Director for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement that the arrival in Italy today of a cargo ship carrying some 450 migrants is part of “an ongoing and worrying situation” that European Governments can no longer ignore.

According to media reports, nearly 800 migrants were rescued from another ship found abandoned without any crew earlier in the week.

The use of ships of such size marked a new trend, Mr. Cochetel noted, while underlining the need for urgent and concerted European action in the Mediterranean Sea, along with more efforts to rescue people at sea and stepped-up efforts to provide legal alternatives to dangerous voyages.

“Without safer ways for refugees to find safety in Europe, we won’t be able to reduce the multiple risks and dangers posed by these movements at sea,” he said. “UNHCR thanks the Italian authorities for their response to these latest incidents, despite the phasing down of the Mare Nostrum operation.”

He emphasized his concerns about the ending of that operation despite the absence of a similar European search-and-rescue operation to replace it.

“This will undoubtedly increase the risk for those trying to find safety in Europe,” he said.

VATICAN CITY (VIS) – The Pope's message for the 23rd World Day of the Sick 2015 begins with a phrase from the Book of Job: “I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame”, explained from the perspective of “sapientia cordis”, the wisdom of the heart that “is not theoretical, abstract knowledge, the product of reasoning”, Pope Francis remarked, but rather “a way of seeing things infused by the Holy Spirit in the minds and hearts of those who are sensitive to the sufferings of their brothers and sisters and who can see in them the image of God”.

World Day of the Sick, instituted by St. John Paul II in 1992, is held on 11 February, feast day of the Virgin of Lourdes. The full text of the Message is published below:

“Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On this, the twenty-third World Day of the Sick, begun by Saint John Paul II, I turn to all of you who are burdened by illness and are united in various ways to the flesh of the suffering Christ, as well as to you, professionals and volunteers in the field of health care.

This year’s theme invites us to reflect on a phrase from the Book of Job: 'I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame'. I would like to consider this phrase from the perspective of 'sapientia cordis' – the wisdom of the heart.

1. This 'wisdom' is not theoretical, abstract knowledge, the product of reasoning. Rather, it is, as Saint James describes it in his Letter, 'pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity'. It is a way of seeing things infused by the Holy Spirit in the minds and the hearts of those who are sensitive to the sufferings of their brothers and sisters and who can see in them the image of God. So let us take up the prayer of the Psalmist: 'Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom'. This 'sapientia cordis', which is a gift of God, is a compendium of the fruits of the World Day of the Sick.

2. Wisdom of the heart means serving our brothers and sisters. Job’s words: 'I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame', point to the service which this just man, who enjoyed a certain authority and a position of importance amongst the elders of his city, offered to those in need. His moral grandeur found expression in the help he gave to the poor who sought his help and in his care for orphans and widows.

Today too, how many Christians show, not by their words but by lives rooted in a genuine faith, that they are 'eyes to the blind' and 'feet to the lame'! They are close to the sick in need of constant care and help in washing, dressing and eating. This service, especially when it is protracted, can become tiring and burdensome. It is relatively easy to help someone for a few days but it is difficult to look after a person for months or even years, in some cases when he or she is no longer capable of expressing gratitude. And yet, what a great path of sanctification this is! In those difficult moments we can rely in a special way on the closeness of the Lord, and we become a special means of support for the Church’s mission.

3. Wisdom of the heart means being with our brothers and sisters. Time spent with the sick is holy time. It is a way of praising God who conforms us to the image of his Son, who 'came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many'. Jesus himself said: 'I am among you as one who serves'.

With lively faith let us ask the Holy Spirit to grant us the grace to appreciate the value of our often unspoken willingness to spend time with these sisters and brothers who, thanks to our closeness and affection, feel more loved and comforted. How great a lie, on the other hand, lurks behind certain phrases which so insist on the importance of 'quality of life' that they make people think that lives affected by grave illness are not worth living!

4. Wisdom of the heart means going forth from ourselves towards our brothers and sisters. Occasionally our world forgets the special value of time spent at the bedside of the sick, since we are in such a rush; caught up as we are in a frenzy of doing, of producing, we forget about giving ourselves freely, taking care of others, being responsible for others. Behind this attitude there is often a lukewarm faith which has forgotten the Lord’s words: 'You did it unto me’.

For this reason, I would like once again to stress 'the absolute priority of “going forth from ourselves toward our brothers and sisters” as one of the two great commandments which ground every moral norm and as the clearest sign for discerning spiritual growth in response to God’s completely free gift'. The missionary nature of the Church is the wellspring of an 'effective charity and a compassion which understands, assists and promotes'.

5. Wisdom of the heart means showing solidarity with our brothers and sisters while not judging them. Charity takes time. Time to care for the sick and time to visit them. Time to be at their side like Job’s friends: 'And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great'. Yet Job’s friends harboured a judgement against him: they thought that Job’s misfortune was a punishment from God for his sins. True charity is a sharing which does not judge, which does not demand the conversion of others; it is free of that false humility which, deep down, seeks praise and is self-satisfied about whatever good it does.

Job’s experience of suffering finds its genuine response only in the cross of Jesus, the supreme act of God’s solidarity with us, completely free and abounding in mercy. This response of love to the drama of human pain, especially innocent suffering, remains for ever impressed on the body of the risen Christ; his glorious wounds are a scandal for faith but also the proof of faith.

Even when illness, loneliness and inability make it hard for us to reach out to others, the experience of suffering can become a privileged means of transmitting grace and a source for gaining and growing in “sapientia cordis”. We come to understand how Job, at the end of his experience, could say to God: 'I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you'. People immersed in the mystery of suffering and pain, when they accept these in faith, can themselves become living witnesses of a faith capable of embracing suffering, even without being able to understand its full meaning.

6. I entrust this World Day of the Sick to the maternal protection of Mary, who conceived and gave birth to Wisdom incarnate: Jesus Christ, our Lord.

O Mary, Seat of Wisdom, intercede as our Mother for all the sick and for those who care for them! Grant that, through our service of our suffering neighbours, and through the experience of suffering itself, we may receive and cultivate true wisdom of heart!

With this prayer for all of you, I impart my Apostolic Blessing”.