WHO warns of knock-on deaths as Ebola hits health systems

Wednesday, December 3, 2014
By Paul Martin

Vaccination programmes and general health services have stopped in the worst affected areas of the three countries, says WHO’s Gerard Schmets

LiveMint.com
Tue, Dec 02 2014

Geneva: Ebola-related deaths in west Africa will be higher than the number of people directly infected because of its disruption to already weak healthcare services, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday.

The WHO is convening a meeting in Geneva next week with finance and health ministers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, donors and NGOs, to develop “practical actions” on how to improve healthcare systems for the future.

“Ebola has strongly impacted the already weak health systems, and Ebola has probably killed more people than the 6,000 linked to the disease itself,” said the WHO’s coordinator of health systems, Gerard Schmets.

He added, “This is a real critical situation that these countries are facing.”

“Vaccination programmes and general health services have stopped altogether in the worst affected areas of the three countries, which have born the brunt of the outbreak, while pregnancy care has also been hit,” he said. There was already a shortage of health workers—Sierra Leone had only two doctors for every 100,000 people, or just about 120 doctors for six million people before the Ebola outbreak began.

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