W.H.O. Moves Team in Sierra Leone After a Medical Worker Contracts Ebola
By SHERI FINK
NYTimes.com
AUG. 26, 2014
The World Health Organization announced Tuesday that it had removed its Ebola response teams from a region of Sierra Leone that has been hardest hit by the outbreak after a Senegalese epidemiologist there contracted the virus.
The pullback comes just a day after the organization announced a “reinvigorated commitment” and an increase in its work to combat Ebola in Sierra Leone, one of three West African nations at the center of the outbreak.
The organization was overseeing two teams in Kailahun, near the Guinean border, said Christy Feig, its director of communications. Those pulled back included three Public Health Agency of Canada workers running a mobile laboratory that tested for the virus, and three employees of the World Health Organization who coordinated the tracing of victims’ contacts, among other tasks, Ms. Feig said. The aid group Doctors Without Borders operates an 80-bed treatment center in Kailahun, which will continue operating, according to Michael Goldfarb, a media relations manager for the group.
