Ebola likely to persist in 2015 as communities resist aid: Red Cross
BY STEPHANIE NEBEHAY
Reuters.com
Fri Jan 30, 2015
(Reuters) – West Africa will be lucky to wipe out Ebola this year, as the local population remains suspicious of aid workers, especially in Guinea, the Red Cross said on Friday.
The virus is “flaring up” in new areas in the region and not all infections are being reported, said Birte Hald, who leads the Ebola coordination and support unit of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“We are also seeing that in places like Sierra Leone and especially in Guinea that it is flaring up in new districts all the time, with small new chains of transmission, which means that it’s not under control and it could flare up big-time again,” Hald told a news briefing in Geneva.
“I think that we should consider ourselves lucky and fortunate if we are able to stop it in 2015,” she said.
More than 6,000 Red Cross volunteers are deployed in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, tracing contacts of those infected, isolating suspect cases and ensuring safe burials, she said.
But the Red Cross still has “no access” to some communities in Guinea, Hald said. It saw “quite a number of incidents” of backlash in January.
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