Ebola outbreak: Fresh warning issued as regional crisis talks start

The Ebola epidemic gripping West Africa will get worse before it gets better, the head of the United States’ top health body has warned, as health ministers from affected nations held crisis talks.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden, said there was no quick fix to what the World Health Organisation has called an “unprecedented” outbreak and called for “urgent action”.

A total of 1,427 people have died from Ebola since the start of the year, with 2,615 people infected. Most of the deaths have been in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, with a handful of cases in Nigeria.

But the WHO, medical charities treating the sick and dying and others believe those figures are likely to be far too low because of community resistance to outside medical staff and a lack of access to infected areas.

Frieden told a news conference in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Wednesday evening: “The cases are increasing. I wish I did not have to say this but it is going to get worse before it gets better.”

His comments, which follow other warnings about the longer-term threat posed by the outbreak and the need for a better global response, came as health ministers of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS gathered in Ghana.

The Economic Community of West African States said the talks in Accra, aimed to strengthen its members’ response to the epidemic.

Ebola, which claimed the life of one ECOWAS official in Nigeria’s financial capital, Lagos, was “a threat to regional and global public health safety as well as the economic and social security of the affected countries”, it said in a statement.

There has been mounting concern about the effect of the most lethal outbreak of the tropical virus in history after airlines stopped international flights to the crisis zone.

Air France yesterday became the latest carrier to announce a suspension of its services to Sierra Leone, while British Airways said it was stopping its flights to Freetown and Monrovia until next year.

Royal Air Morocco is now the only airline providing a regular service for both capitals, although the company said that flights were only about 10 per cent full from Casablanca.

The United Nations’ envoy on Ebola, David Nabarro, this week criticised airlines for scrapping flights, warning that Ebola-hit countries faced increased isolation and made it harder for the UN to carry out its work.

Liberia has been worst hit by the outbreak, with 624 deaths recorded. Sporadic violence, including against hospitals treating Ebola patients, has been seen and some areas of the city placed under quarantine.

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