Why is this the worst ever outbreak of Ebola?…a ‘perfect storm’ – everything is there for it to snowball.”
By Rose Walker
TelegraphUK
26 Aug 2014
The current Ebola outbreak has infected a record number of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers.
To date, more than 240 medics have been infected by the virus in West Africa and more than 120 have died.
Peter Piot, the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the virus in 1976, described the current outbreak as a “perfect storm”.
“We have never seen an [Ebola] epidemic on this scale,” Mr Piot told French daily Liberation.
“In the last six months, we have been witnessing what can be described as a ‘perfect storm’ – everything is there for it to snowball.”
The epidemic “is exploding in countries where health services are not functioning, ravaged by decades of civil war,” Piot said.
“In addition, the public is deeply suspicious of the authorities. Trust must be restored. Nothing can be done in an epidemic like Ebola if there is no trust.”
The World Health Organisation has cited a number of reasons for the deadly toll of this outbreak of the Ebola virus on medical staff:
– In many cases, medical staff are at risk because no protective equipment is available – even in dedicated Ebola wards, the correct equipment is often scarce. The affected countries, especially Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo, are among Africa’s poorest.
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