MONROVIA: World Health Organisation said on Thursday that Ebola virus has spread in West Africa after a total of 4,493 deaths and the situation in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is worsening day by day.
A World Health Organisation report said a total of 8,997 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola had been reported in seven countries till October 12 while a vast majority of these cases occurred in the three West African nations. In Spain and the United States, a handful of healthcare workers are ill, while Senegal and Nigeria appear to have prevented further spread of the disease, the World Health Organisation said.
“It is clear…that the situation in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is deteriorating, with widespread and persistent transmission of (Ebola),” the WHO report stated. In Guinea 843 people have died of the disease and an increase in new cases was driven by a spike in infection in the coastal capital Conakry and the nearby district of Coyah.
In Liberia, the UN health agency said that problems with data gathering made it hard to draw conclusions about the evolution of the epidemic, with the number of cases in the capital Monrovia almost certainly significantly under-reported. The United States is deploying up to 4,000 troops to West Africa to help contain an outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever with the bulk of the effort targeting Liberia.