A
banner reading 'Ebola is real, Protect yourself and your family', warns
people of the Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia, Saturday Aug. 2, 2014.
An Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 700 people in West Africa is
moving faster than efforts to control the disease, the head of the
World Health Organization warned, as presidents from the affected
countries met Friday in Guinea's capital. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)
The World Health Organization's (WHO) recent prediction that the
Ebola epidemic in West Africa could afflict more than 20,000 people
before it’s brought under control is sparking fear among some about what
may happen if the virus goes airborne.
“The [estimate of 20,000] assumes full international backing for an
intervention to control the deadly outbreak,” econometrics research
assistant Francis Smart told WND.com.
“Failure to support the WHO’s plan presumably would cause the disease
to spread in a similar manner as it already has,” Smart said.
The WHO projects six months will be the minimum amount of time needed to contain the epidemic.
However, Canadian researchers say the strain of Ebola afflicting West
Africa can be transmitted between humans by breathing, opening up the
possibility of the virus going airborne. Suspected cases of airborne
infection have already been reported in monkeys in laboratories.
“The possibility of it becoming airborne could result in a global
spread of the disease resulting in [an] unprecedented number of deaths
world-wide -- it is more than prudent to heavily invest in controlling
the number of new patients infected by this disease,” Smart told
WND.com.
Smart’s predictions come on the heels of a warning from the director
of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who said
the outbreak was “spiraling out of control.”
“Guinea did show that with action, they brought it partially under
control. But unfortunately it is back on the increase now,” CDC's Dr.
Thomas Kenyon said. “It’s not under control anymore,” adding the window
of opportunity for controlling it was closing.
Kenyon also warned that the longer the outbreak went uncontained, the greater the possibility the virus could mutate.
Ebola has killed about 2,300 people with no sign of slowing six months after the outbreak began.
The disease is taking a particularly heavy toll on health care
workers, whose jobs put them at high risk because Ebola is only
transmitted through contact with the bodily fluids of people showing
symptoms or dead bodies. More than 135 health workers have died in the
outbreak so far, exacerbating shortages of doctors and nurses in
countries that already had too few medical workers to begin with.
Sierra Leone and Liberia have been especially hard hit, and officials
have warned that both countries could see a surge in cases soon. Sierra
Leone is expecting to uncover potentially hundreds of new cases when
volunteers go house to house looking for the sick during a three-day
lockdown later this month. The WHO has said Liberia could see many
thousands of new cases in the coming weeks.
"We are at war with an enemy that we don't see," Liberian Finance
Minister Amara Konneh told reporters. "And we have to win the war."
But he said Liberia would be dependent on international assistance to
do so. The U.N. has said at least $600 million is needed to fight Ebola
in West Africa, and already several pledges have come in. The United
States has spent $100 million so far, with more promised,and Britain has given $40 million.
end quote from:
No comments:
Post a Comment