Ebola cases in West Africa may be vastly underreported, WHO says
By Alexandra Zavis, Melissa Healy
LATimes.com
Aug. 28, 2014
The United Nations health agency said Thursday that the world’s worst Ebola outbreak is accelerating and could infect more than 20,000 people before it is brought under control.
More than 3,000 suspected and confirmed cases have been reported in four West African countries, and at least 1,552 people have died of the virus, according to figures released by the World Health Organization. But the actual number of cases in areas of intense transmission could be two to four times those reported, WHO said.
“This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, the organization’s assistant director-general for emergency operations, told reporters in Geneva. “The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases.”
The disease has typically surfaced in remote, forest villages and killed most of its victims before it could spread very far. This is the first time an outbreak has extended to four countries, including densely populated urban centers.
The outbreak was first reported in Guinea in March and spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. A separate Ebola outbreak has killed at least 13 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo but is not believed to be related to the infections in West Africa.
More than 40% of the cases have occurred in the last three weeks, although most are concentrated in only a few localities, WHO said. The fatality rate is 52%, lower than in previous outbreaks.
There is no vaccine or cure for the disease, which is spread through contact with bodily fluids.
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