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WHO Urges West Africa Governments to Agree on Ebola Response
The World Health Organization urged
West African governments to collaborate more closely to stop the
world’s worst outbreak of the Ebola virus from spreading beyond
the three countries where cases have been reported.
Cases of the hemorrhagic fever have killed 455 people,
including 32 health workers, in Guinea, Sierra Leone and
Liberia, Luis Sambo, the WHO’s regional director for Africa,
said at the opening of a two-day conference on the disease in
the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Health ministers in the region must step up spending on disease prevention and involve religious and community leaders in the affected areas so that people are better informed about Ebola. The outbreak “has the potential to spread outside the affected countries and beyond the region if urgent and relevant containing measures are not put in place,” he said.
The Ebola outbreak that began in southern Guinea in March marks the first time anyone has died from the disease in West Africa. The illness causes high fever, diarrhea and vomiting, and can lead to internal bleeding. There is no specific treatment or vaccine for the virus, which kills 50 percent to 90 percent of those who contract it, according to the WHO.
The rapid spread of the virus is largely due to people moving across borders in the area where Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone meet as well as cultural practices that are contrary to public health guidelines, Sambo said. The organization said June 26 the outbreak will probably continue to spread for about another four months.
Medical Obstacles
Guinea’s government is working with religious leaders, including those who are in charge of so-called sacred forests, to make sure practices that may lead to the disease spreading are avoided, Minister of Health Remy Lamah said in an interview in Accra today.“There is a fringe part of the population that doesn’t believe Ebola actually exists,” he said. “We are using all media platforms we have available to make people aware that Ebola is real and that it’s here.”
Some of the medical staff who died in the first wave of the outbreak were not following hygiene guidelines, he said.
“We noticed that some doctors and nurses did not wash their hands and that was a habit that contributed to spreading the disease,” he said. “We paid a high price by not respecting basic standards of hygiene. Now, washing hands is done by everybody, in all the schools, all the government offices, all the clinics.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Pauline Bax in Accra at pbax@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net Andres R. Martinez, Michael Gunn
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