West Africa: ‘Ebola Virus Epidemic in Africa Poised to Explode’
By Chukwuma Muanya
AllAfrica.com
26 October 2014
SCIENTISTS predict that unless international commitments are significantly and immediately increased, the Ebola virus disease epidemic already devastating swaths of West Africa will likely get far worse in the coming weeks and months.
The warning came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported at the weekend that more than 10,000 people had been infected with the disease and nearly half of them had died.
The United Nations (UN) health agency said Sunday that the number of confirmed, probable and suspected cases had risen to 10,141. Of those cases, 4,922 people have died. WHO’s figures show about 200 new cases since the last report, four days ago.
A team of seven United States scientists from Yale’s Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia has developed a mathematical transmission model of the viral disease and applied it to Liberia’s most populous county, Montserrado, an area already hard-hit.
The researchers determined that tens of thousands of new Ebola cases – and deaths – are likely by December 15 if the epidemic continues on its current course.
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