– ‘Need to be pragmatic’ –
The latest WHO figures underscore Ebola’s asymmetric spread, as it rips through densely populated communities with decrepit health facilities and poor public awareness campaigns.
Speaking Tuesday, WHO’s epidemiology chief Sylvie Briand said the goal in Senegal and Nigeria was now “to stop transmission completely”. Senegal has announced only one infection, while Nigeria has recorded 19 infections and eight deaths.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is battling a separate outbreak which has killed 32 in a remote northwestern region.
“But in other locations, like Monrovia, where we have really wide community transmission, we are aiming at two-step strategies,” Briand said in Geneva, “first, to reduce the transmission as much as possible and, when it becomes controllable, we will also try to stop it completely.
“But at this point in time we need to be pragmatic and try to reduce it in the initial steps.”
A day earlier the WHO had warned that aid organisations trying to help Liberia to respond would “need to prepare to scale up their current efforts by three- to four-fold”.
Before the current outbreak, it noted, Liberia only had one doctor for every 100,000 patients in a population of 4.4 million.
In Montserrado County, which contains Monrovia, there are no spare beds at the few Ebola treatment sites operating, the WHO said.
It described how infected people were being driven to centres only to be turned away, return home and create “flare-ups” of deadly fever in their villages.
It said 1,000 beds are needed – far more than the 240 currently operational and 260 planned.
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