The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the
number of new Ebola cases is likely to soar over the coming weeks.
Dr Bruce Aylward, the WHO’s assistant director-general, told
a news conference in Geneva that in the last four weeks, there have been about
1,000 new cases per week and if countries don’t step up their response, "a
lot more people will die with a spiralling number of cases - up to 10,000 cases
per week in two months”.
Aylward also put the death rate in the current Ebola
outbreak at 70 percent. Although the WHO’s regular updates have shown a death
rate of 50 percent, with 4,447 deaths out of the 8,914 reported cases,
Aylward said that assumption could be mistaken because many deaths are
not reported or recorded officially.
He said that where detailed investigations have been carried
out, it was clear that only 30% of people were surviving, a figure that was
almost exactly the same in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three hardest
hit countries.
The newly established UN Mission for Ebola Emergency
Response plans to isolate 70% of suspected cases in West Africa and safely bury
70% of the dead within the next 60 days.
Aylward’s estimate came a day after WHO director general
Margaret Chan confirmed that the present Ebola outbreak is the "most
severe acute health emergency in modern times".
According to Chan, the epidemic has proved that "the
world is ill-prepared to respond to any severe, sustained and threatening
public health emergency”.
Via,telesurtv.net
No comments:
Post a Comment