Ebola outbreak: Death toll passes 3,000 as WHO warns numbers are ‘vastly underestimated’
Lizzie Dearden
IndependentUK
Saturday 27 September 2014
The confirmed death toll from the Ebola outbreak has passed 3,000 as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that the available figures “vastly underestimate the true scale of the epidemic”.
In its latest situation report on the virus, the agency said 3,133 deaths had been reported in total, mainly from the worst-hit West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and cases are growing “exponentially”.
Ebola is spreading and has also caused several deaths in Nigeria, been reported in Senegal and is edging towards the border of the Côte d’Ivoire.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thousands of miles away from the disease hotspots, there is also a “separate, unrelated outbreak of Ebola” that has killed more than 40 people.
It is believed to be a different strain of the viral haemorrhagic fever ravaging the other side of the continent.
A spokesperson for WHO warned that the epidemic is showing no sign of slowing, killing an estimated 71 per cent of people infected as the search for a cure continues.
“These figures, which are far greater than those from all previous Ebola outbreaks combined, are known by WHO to vastly underestimate the true scale of the epidemic,” a spokesperson said.
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