The world is falling behind in a desperate race stop the deadly Ebola outbreak, a top UN official warned on Tuesday amid dire predictions that thousands of new infections are possible before the end of the year.
“Ebola got a head start on us,” UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) head Anthony Banbury said.
“It is far ahead of us, it is running faster than us and it is winning the race,” the Briton told the UN Security Council in New York by remote link from UNMEER headquarters in Accra, Ghana.
Photo: Reuters
The UN official made his remarks as the WHO said the Ebola infection rate could soon reach 10,000 a week as world leaders prepared to hold talks on the crisis at the UN.
“We either stop Ebola now or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan,” Banbury said.
He said that with infection rates rising exponentially every day, UNMEER will need 7,000 beds for treatment.
However, to push back the spread, “we must defeat Ebola and we must do it fast,” he said.
WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward, describing his figures as a working forecast, said the epidemic “could reach 5,000 to 10,000 cases per week by the first week of December.”
The latest death toll is 4,447, from 8,914 recorded infections, Aylward said.
Meanwhile, a second healthcare worker at a Dallas, Texas, hospital who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US has tested positive for the disease, authorities said yesterday.
The worker reported a fever on Tuesday and was immediate isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement.
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