Ebola Mortality Rates Up to 70 Percent; Obama Warns World 'Not Doing Enough'
The World Health Organization has said that mortality rates from the deadly Ebola outbreak spreading throughout West Africa have gone up to 70 percent, and there could be as many as 10,000 new cases recorded per week by the end of the year. President Barack Obama has warned that the world is "not doing enough" in terms of a response.
WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Bruce Aylward told reporters in Switzerland that although the mortality rate had been at 50 percent, statistics have now bumped it up to 70 percent. There is no cure for the disease, which had killed at least 4,447 people as of Tuesday, but early detection and treatment can prove effective and tackling it.
Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea have suffered the most casualties, though cases have reached western countries including the U.S. as well. Obama, who is set to discuss the crisis in a video conference with British, French, German and Italian leaders, said that "the world as a whole is not doing enough" to contain the Ebola threat, BBC News reported.
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Obama has sent close to 3,000 medical personnel to West Africa to build treatment tents and educate the public on prevention measures, but WHO officials have warned that more help will be needed from the international community.
"Ebola is unfamiliar. It's scary," said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, according to CNN. "And getting it right is really, really important, because the stakes are so high."
The U.N.'s Ebola mission chief, Anthony Banbury, told the Security Council that right now Ebola is "winning the race."
"If we do not get ahead of the crisis, if we do not reach our targets and the number of people with Ebola rises dramatically as some have predicted, the plan we have is not scalable to the size of such a new crisis," Banbury said.
The WHO has also warned that the projected infection rate could reach from 5,000 to 10,000 new cases a week by December if efforts to combat the outbreak are not stepped up.
The organization noted that it expects cases to top 9,000 by the end of the week, and revealed that it estimates it figures by multiplying the number of confirmed cases — from Guinea by 1.5, from Sierra Leone by 2 and from Liberia by 2.5 — to account for under-reporting.
As the strain of the Ebola outbreak hits the health care systems of the affected countries, some nurses and medical professionals in Liberia decided to walk out in demand for better pay and safer working conditions earlier this week.
A source told Al Jazeera that a number of facilities in the country were "virtually abandoned," with "nurses afraid of touching patients."
"They refuse to take blood samples from patients or even take their temperature because these require them to touch patients," local journalist Terence Sesay said.
Over 200 healthcare workers have been infected by the virus in Liberia alone, and at least 95 of them have died, underscoring the dangers for people working in close proximity with Ebola patients.
