MONROVIA (AFP) – Liberia is bracing for an upsurge
in Ebola cases, following a grim World Health
Organization assessment on Tuesday that the worst
is yet to come in the fight against the killer virus. While the WHO predicted an “exponential increase”
in infections across West Africa, it warned that
Liberia, which has reaped the lion’s share of misery
with half of all fatalities, could initially only hope to
slow contagion, not stop it. The UN’s health arm upped the Ebola death toll
Tuesday in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria
to 2,288 out of 4,269 cases, noting nearly half of all
infections had occurred in the past 21 days. The WHO also evacuated its second infected medical
expert, a doctor had been working at an Ebola
treatment centre in Sierra Leone. Emory University Hospital in Georgia on Tuesday
admitted an American who had contracted Ebola in
West Africa, but the hospital has declined to confirm
it was the WHO employee. Ebola, transmitted through bodily fluids, leads to
haemorrhagic fever and — in over half of cases —
death. There is no specific treatment regime and no
licensed vaccine. The fresh WHO figures underscore Ebola’s
asymmetric spread, as it rips through densely
populated communities with decrepit public health
facilities. Speaking Tuesday, WHO’s epidemiology chief Sylvie
Briand said that 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, according to figures from
Saturday. “But in other locations, like Monrovia, where we
have really wide community transmission, we are
aiming at two-step strategies,” Briand told a
briefing 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 this year’s outbreak, it noted, Liberia only
had one doctor to treat every 100,000 patients in a
total population of 4.4 million people. In Montserrado county containing Monrovia, there
are no spare beds at the few Ebola treatment sites
operating, the WHO said, describing infectious
people being driven to centres, only to return home
to create “flare-ups” of deadly fever in their village. One thousand beds are needed — far more than
the 240 currently up and 260 more planned, it said. “It’s a war against this virus … I still have hope we
can win this war,” the WHO’s Briand said. - Border closure, controls - On Monday the 17,000 residents of Liberia’s Dolo
Town, 75 kilometres (47 miles) from Monrovia,
were freed from a lockdown imposed more than
two weeks ago. The quarantine including a night-time curfew had
been set up amidst a surge in Ebola infections, at
the same time as West Point, a slum in the capital. In the scramble to halt the contagion, some affected
countries have quarantined whole regions. Several
countries have stopped flights from affected areas. African Union commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-
Zuma called Monday for travel bans to be lifted “to
open up economic activities”. But other countries have stepped up limits on the
movement of people travelling from West Africa.
China, one of the region’s main investors, on
Tuesday announced it was reinforcing checks on
people, goods and vehicles, as well as mail, arriving
from affected countries. In Gambia, customs officials said they had closed
the borders to Guineans, Liberians, Nigerians and
Sierraleoneans — though not to neighbouring
Senegal. Italy announced a first possible case of Ebola — a
woman who had recently returned from Nigeria. And the United States offered $10 million to pay for
medical workers and equipment as part of an
African Union deployment to battle the outbreak.


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/09/liberia-braces-worst-ebola-death-toll-jumps/

God intervention is needed in that country.

Gwad.....how did it even get to this level

arvinsloane: Gwad.....how did it even get to this level

only God Almighty can save oooooo