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Knock, knock.

Who's there?

If you're an older resident of a low-income area outside Cape Town, it might be Gloria Gxebeka. She's a 63-year-old grandmother and retired cook who used to spend her days at home alone and glued to the TV, especially the American soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. But now she's got a new job. She goes door-to-door, checking on the health of other older folks in her neighborhood.

Gxebeka works for the program AgeWell Global, directed by Dr. Mitch Besser, an American physician. Besser also founded mothers2mothers, an organization that trains HIV-positive women to mentor other HIV-positive women when they're pregnant.

i i

Thami Mlotaywa (left) and Gloria Gxebeka go door to door, checking on the health of aging neighbors. Anders Kelto/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Kelto/NPR

Thami Mlotaywa (left) and Gloria Gxebeka go door to door, checking on the health of aging neighbors.

Anders Kelto/NPR

That idea — moms helping other moms — turned out to be very effective at preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Africa. So Besser wondered how else this peer-to-peer model of health care might be applied.

He started thinking about his parents and some of their aging friends. "Their children have moved away, they can't drive anymore, and in many respects they become prisoners of their households," Besser says.

Then he thought: Why not have other older people check up on them?

One morning, Gxebeka and a co-worker, Thami Mlotaywa, stop in to see 86-year-old Ann-Marie Fisher, a fellow grandmother who has a raspy voice and walks with a cane. They sit with Fisher on a saggy couch and read a list of 20 questions from a customized cell phone. Has Fisher felt confused or dizzy in the last seven days? Has she had trouble breathing? Did she skip any meals?

Goats and Soda

A Happy Marriage, A Terrible Secret, A Healthy Baby

Gxebeka and Mlotaywa then look around Fisher's home and make 20 observations: Are there any tripping hazards? Has Fisher been well enough to keep the place tidy?

Gxebeka enters all of this information into the phone, which has a special app that does a calculation. A message appears: Based on the information, Fisher does not need to see a doctor or social worker.

Then comes the best part of the visit: the gossiping. The women recall stories from their younger years, including a time when Gxebeka saw her husband walking down the street with another woman.

"I was so cross!" she says, laughing.

AgeWell Global employs roughly 30 workers who go door-to-door and serve a client base of more than 100 people. For some workers, it's the first job they've ever held. They work 20 hours per week and are paid above minimum wage.

Directors of AgeWell Global say it's too early to know if the program has medical benefits, such as diagnosing diseases earlier or reducing hospitalizations. But preliminary data collected by the organization suggests an emotional benefit: a reduction in depression among people who receive the visits, according to a commonly used test.

The people who do the visiting seem to benefit, too. Gloria Gxebeka used to complain about her health: "My blood pressure was always up, my sugar was always up." But she claims that working regularly, and spending time with her neighbors, has made her feel better. "I'm really feeling excellent, fantastic, number one," she says.

And she can still watch The Bold and the Beautiful after she gets home.

South Africa

Aging

Goats and Soda

Can The U.S. Military Turn The Tide In The Ebola Outbreak?

Two new U.S. Ebola treatment facilities are expected to open in Liberia over the next week. One is a 25-bed field hospital near Monrovia's airport, specifically to treat local health care workers who get infected. The other is a 100-bed Ebola treatment unit, or ETU, in the town of Tubmanburg, north of Monrovia.

The 25-bed hospital is finished and set to open this weekend. But overall, progress has been slow in building the 18 field hospitals that the U.S promised Liberia back in September. However, Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky from the 101st Airborne, who is commanding the U.S. forces in Liberia, says five are under construction and work will begin soon on 12 more.

"Now that we are out of the rainy season, we've been able to make pretty good progress on building," says Volesky. "So you'll see these ETUs coming up online a lot quicker just because we're not fighting the elements."

The U.S. has pledged to build ETUs all across Liberia with the idea that others will manage those facilities.

Goats and Soda

The U.S. Ebola Hospitals In Liberia Are Going Up ... Slowly

Volesky says that's part of the reason the ETUs aren't going up faster: Constructing them is only one piece of the equation. They also have to make sure they can put health care providers in them to treat patients.

"What we want to do is not accelerate the ETU construction and then have an empty ETU that we've got to secure," he says.

From the beginning of this operation, President Obama made it clear that U.S. Army medics will not be treating patients at the new centers. The World Health Organization says it's still searching for international aid groups to run and staff 14 of the yet-to-be-built ETUs.

Even before any of these proposed wards open, there are signs that the Ebola epidemic may be weakening in Liberia. Many of the existing Ebola hospitals there — which were completely overwhelmed in September — now report having empty beds.

Volesky says these changes on the ground could alter what the U.S. finally builds: "What we don't want to do here, as the military, is come in here and build capacity or capability that the Liberians can't sustain." That's a lesson he picked up from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He still expects to construct all the promised treatment units but some of them might end up being smaller than originally planned.

Goats and Soda

Could Ebola Be Slowing Down In Liberia?

Liberia has gone from having more than 400 new cases of Ebola each week in late August to reporting just 50 cases in the last week of October. Some researchers are even questioning whether the country needs hundreds of additional Ebola treatment beds.

But there have been other ebbs and flows in this outbreak, warned Dr. Bruce Aylward, the assistant director-general at WHO, who is in charge of the organization's operational response to the Ebola outbreak.

"My God, the single biggest mistake anybody could make now is to think, 'Well, do we really need all those beds?' " he said in a press conference last week in Geneva. "Absolutely, because remember, what you're looking at is treatment centers that are geographically located across these countries in hot spot areas."

If the U.S. military follows through with its plan to build an Ebola ward in every county across Liberia, Aylward said, Ebola cases from rural areas could be isolated much faster, which would prevent the spread to new communities.

He added that right now is a critical moment in the outbreak. "I'm terrified that the information will be misinterpreted and that people would start to think, 'Oh great, [Ebola] is under control,' " he told reporters. "That's like saying your pet tiger is under control or something. This is a very, very dangerous disease."

It's not the time, he said, for the international community to back off.

Volesky says the American military isn't. In fact, its presence will grow significantly — from 1,300 servicemen right now to 3,000 by the end of the month.

In addition to constructing the treatment centers, U.S. troops have started training health care workers in Monrovia to work in the Ebola wards. The U.S. Navy is running mobile laboratories to test blood samples for Ebola. The Army just sent soldiers from its Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Command from the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to set up more mobile labs in Liberia.

Volesky's operation now also has helicopters at its disposal. He says the U.S. military can provide speed and flexibility in the battle against Ebola — and he expects it to play an even bigger role in the weeks to come.

Ebola treatment units

ebola

Liberia

Military

Goats and Soda

Can The U.S. Military Turn The Tide In The Ebola Outbreak?

Two new U.S. Ebola treatment facilities are expected to open in Liberia over the next week. One is a 25-bed field hospital near Monrovia's airport, specifically to treat local health care workers who get infected. The other is a hundred-bed Ebola treatment unit, or ETU, in the town of Tubmanburg, north of Monrovia.

The 25-bed hospital is finished and set to open this weekend. But overall, progress has been slow in building the 18 field hospitals that the U.S promised Liberia back in September. However, Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky from the 101st Airborne, who is commanding the U.S. forces in Liberia, says five are currently under construction and work will begin soon on 12 more.

"Now that we are out of the rainy season, we've been able to make pretty good progress on building," says Volesky. "So you'll see these ETUs coming up online a lot quicker just because we're not fighting the elements."

The U.S. has pledged to build ETUs all across Liberia with the idea that others will manage those facilities.

Goats and Soda

The U.S. Ebola Hospitals In Liberia Are Going Up ... Slowly

Volesky says that's part of the reason the ETUs aren't going up faster: Constructing them is only one piece of the equation. They also have to make sure they can put health care providers in them to treat patients.

"What we want to do is not accelerate the ETU construction and then have an empty ETU that we've got to secure," he says.

From the beginning of this operation, President Obama made it clear that U.S. Army medics will not be treating patients at the new centers. The World Health Organization says it's still searching for international aid groups to run and staff 14 of the yet-to-be-built ETUs.

Even before any of these proposed wards open, there are signs that the Ebola epidemic may be weakening in Liberia. Many of the existing Ebola hospitals there — which were completely overwhelmed in September — now report having empty beds.

Volesky says these changes on the ground could alter what the U.S. finally builds: "What we don't want to do here, as the military, is come in here and build capacity or capability that the Liberians can't sustain." That's a lesson he picked up from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He still expects to construct all the promised treatment units but some of them might end up being smaller than originally planned.

Goats and Soda

Could Ebola Be Slowing Down In Liberia?

Liberia has gone from having more than 400 new cases of Ebola each week in late August to reporting just 50 cases in the last week of October. Some researchers are even questioning whether the country needs hundreds of additional Ebola treatment beds.

But there have been other ebbs and flows in this outbreak, warned Dr. Bruce Aylward, the assistant director-general at WHO, who is in charge of the organization's operational response to the Ebola outbreak.

"My God, the single biggest mistake anybody could make now is to think, 'Well, do we really need all those beds?'" he said in a press conference last week in Geneva. "Absolutely, because remember, what you're looking at is treatment centers that are geographically located across these countries in hot spot areas."

If the U.S. military follows through with its plan to build an Ebola ward in every county across Liberia, Aylward said, Ebola cases from rural areas could be isolated much faster and prevent the spread to new communities.

He added that right now is a critical moment in the outbreak. "I'm terrified that the information will be misinterpreted and that people would start to think, 'Oh great, [Ebola] is under control,'" he told reporters. "That's like saying your pet tiger is under control or something. This is a very, very dangerous disease."

It's not the time, he said, for the international community to back off.

Volesky says the American military isn't. In fact, its presence will grow significantly — from 1,300 servicemen right now to 3,000 by the end of this month.

In addition to constructing the treatment centers, U.S. troops have started training health care workers in Monrovia to work in the Ebola wards. The U.S. Navy is running mobile laboratories to test blood samples for Ebola. The Army just sent soldiers from its Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Command from the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to set up more mobile labs in Liberia.

Volesky's operation now also has helicopters at its disposal. He says the U.S. military can provide speed and flexibility in the battle against Ebola — and he expects it to play an even bigger role in the weeks to come.

Jon Stewart may be the only media figure who started his election coverage Tuesday with an apology.

"I did vote today ... I was being flip and it kind of took off," said Stewart, who had told CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour in an interview earlier Tuesday that he wasn't voting because he "had just moved, and I don't even know where my thing is." The comment sparked loads of stories about how the comedian wasn't voting in an election he had been talking about for months.

"I want to apologize," Stewart added. "Because I think I wasn't clear enough that I was kidding and it sent a message that I didn't think voting was important or that I didn't think it was a big issue. And I do. And I did vote. And I was being flip and I shouldn't have done that. That was stupid."

Television

Jon Stewart: The Most Trusted Name In Fake News

Monkey See

Stephen Colbert: The End Of One Joke, The Start Of Many More

Yes, it was that kind of night for liberals. Even a left-leaning fake news anchor had to start the night by seeking forgiveness for a screw up.

Both Stewart's Daily Show and its Comedy Central sibling, Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report, went live Tuesday to talk about the historic wins Republicans piled up in this year's midterm elections.

But the wave of red sweeping over the electoral map seemed to dampen the mood a bit at both shows, where leading Republicans like Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham had been the target of barbed jokes for quite a while.

"Look, I'm trying to find any way to entertain people who are truly on a ledge tonight," Stewart joked at one point, just before promising to replace the Statue of Liberty's torch and tablet with a Bible and an AK-47 to signal the GOP's success.

The evening seemed to highlight the limits of news-tinged satire on the political scene, as HBO comic Bill Maher's public effort to oust Republican U.S. Rep. John Kline — referred to on his show Real Time as the "flip a district" campaign — also failed.

Kline, whom Maher criticized for being "invisible" while representing a district outside Minneapolis, won his seventh term in office Tuesday despite repeated criticism from the comic, who devoted a website to the effort and even visited the state for a panel discussion on the election.

On Stewart's and Colbert's shows, the reporting of election results almost seemed an afterthought — though the Daily Show had fun with some election projections, picturing McConnell as a cartoon turtle and showing an alligator gobbling up failed Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, the Republican turned Democrat.

Instead, Stewart poked fun at the influence of money — alum Rob Riggle played a stack of cash giddily celebrating the dollar's role in the most expensive midterm election in history — and interviewed Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus.

"Were you surprised that the Democrats strategy seemed to be curling in a ball and hoping you didn't kick them in the face too hard?" Stewart asked Priebus, setting the tone for the rest of the interview.

Colbert presented his last live election special before leaving Comedy Central to take over David Letterman's Late Show on CBS next year. Many of his jokes centered on the media coverage, lampooning social media-obsessed TV reports and playing multiple instances of Fox News anchor referring to the channel's election data center as its "brain room."

"Just as you suspected, Fox News keeps all their brains in one room," Colbert joked. "And it's not the one with the cameras."

Although his persona on the show is ostensibly a parody of a conservative political commentator, Colbert seemed less like his character than ever, signaling the kind of attitude viewers might see once he moves to CBS and drops the show's conceit forever.

"It's been a good night for Republicans," Colbert said, not really sympathizing with or enjoying the victory. "Some of them are even awake to celebrate it."

Colbert also welcomed conservative pundit-turned-Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan, who blamed Democrats' massive electoral losses on being "weak-kneed" about supporting the president and party policies.

"You have a president who has an excellent economic record ... [who] enacted universal health care, which is their goal for 40 years," says Sullivan. "And they ran away from that achievement and refuse to talk about it."

Colbert responded by asking, "What can we do to get more Americans to vote? Should we have those 'I voted' stickers deep fried?"

There were lots of odd events elsewhere in media coverage Tuesday, including a moment when Fox News pundit Brit Hume kept chanting the world "Redskins" as fellow pundit Juan Williams tried to talk about the controversy surrounding the name of Washington's NFL team.

Former Meet the Press host David Gregory joined fellow NBC alum Katie Couric on Yahoo's election coverage — which was held in a Washington, D.C., bar.

And CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had a novel comeback when a panel responded sluggishly to his question about marijuana legalization just before 1 a.m. Wednesday: "What, are you all stoned, or something?"

The only time Colbert got close to being serious Tuesday was when he wrapped up the show noting it was his eighth and final live election show for Comedy Central in 14 years.

"I'll just end by saying it has been a pleasure and privilege to be welcomed into your homes these last nine years," he said. "So to you and yours and I say a fond ... what's that? I have another month and a half of shows? Well, this was a little too dramatic."

Not dramatic enough to change the tone for TV's leading news satire shows, which worked hard Tuesday to slap a smiling face on a defeat that likely disappointed many fans in their audiences.

Maybe Colbert just got out while the getting was good.