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People walk past a billboard with a message
about Ebola in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on November 7, 2014 ©Francisco Leong
(AFP)
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The deadliest Ebola
outbreak ever is finally slowing in Liberia, the worst-hit country, but still
wreaking havoc in two neighbouring West African states amid warnings of
thousands of unreported deaths.
AFP reports as the initially
lacklustre global response to the crisis centred in Liberia and adjoining
Sierra Leone and Guinea gathered some pace following repeated and impassioned
appeals from top UN officials and world leaders, the good news from Liberia was
tempered by warnings that the global toll is likely vastly underestimated.
The outbreak is
officially thought to have claimed 4,960 lives and infected 13,042 people,
according to the latest data issued by the World Health Organization. But that
could be the tip of the iceberg, an official at the UN health agency said.
"There are lots of
missing deaths in this epidemic," Christopher Dye, WHO's strategy chief,
said, estimating that around 5,000 fatalities could be missing from the
count.
This assessment, he said,
was based on the knowledge that the fatality rate in the epidemic stands at
about 70 percent.
Dye said the likely
explanation was that many people were burying the dead in secret, possibly to
avoid having authorities interfere with burial customs like washing and
touching the deceased widely blamed for much of the transmission.
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Dr. Arjun Srinivasan (R) from the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Peter Sidhu (L) demonstrate how to
remove protective clothing during an Ebola safety session for healthcare
workers in Los Angeles on November 7, 2014 ©Mark Ralston (AFP)
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Sierra Leone's President
Ernest Bai Koroma pressed the point in a meeting this week with lawmakers well
as tribal and religious chiefs. "You must enforce the law and take out the
sick," he said, referring to a ban on traditional mourning rites with
involve contact with corpses.
"This is time for
action and you must stop the hypocrisy in the fight against Ebola," added
Koroma, whose country has recorded 1,070 deaths from the disease and 4,759
cases.
- 'Progress sporadic' -
Even though the spread of
the virus has slowed in Liberia, where 2,697 people had died out of a total of
6,525 cases, officials warned that this is no time for complacency.
"We cannot wait.
This is a situation where we're seeing progress but progress can be sporadic
with this disease if we are not vigilant," said Ertharin Cousin, the head
of the UN's World Food Programme this week while on a tour of West Africa.
"And one message is
that now is the time for everyone to come together to ensure that we are
meeting the needs of people who are affected by this disease, because we are
seeing progress," Cousin said.
Among these are more than
2,000 children left orphans by the disease in Liberia alone, West Africa's
regional bloc ECOWAS said, urging international help to go beyond immediate
medical care.
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US
soldiers teach medical workers how to effectively wear protective gear during a
training session on fighting Ebola on November 7, 2014 at the police academy in
Monrovia ©Zoom Dosso (AFP)
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Anthony Banbury, the UN's
pointman on the fight against Ebola, told the BBC that the international body
had neither received sufficient funds nor the means to fight the disease.
"It's not here yet.
There are still people, villages, towns [and] areas that [are] not getting any
type of help right now and we definitely don't have the response capability on
the ground now from the international community," he said.
The United Nations said
it has received just over half -- US$572 million of the US$988 million -- the
funds it is seeking to finance the fight against the worst outbreak of Ebola
since the discovery of the viral disease in 1976.
US President Barack Obama
is asking Congress for more than US$6.0 billion in emergency funding while
Japan became the latest country this week to pledge extra aid, taking Tokyo's
contribution to a total of US$140 million.
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Medical
staff stage an anti-Ebola drill at the hospital for tropical diseases in Hanoi
on November 7, 2014
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