International medical agency Medecins sans Frontieres said Tuesday the
world was “losing the battle” to contain Ebola as the United Nations
warned of severe food shortages in the hardest-hit countries.
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders told a UN briefing in New
York that world leaders were failing to address the epidemic and called
for an urgent global biological disaster response to get aid and
personnel to west Africa.
Jan Eliasson, the deputy secretary general of the United Nations, said the outbreak was “a test to international solidarity.”
“Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is
losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips
with this transnational threat,” said MSF international president Joanne
Liu.
Her comments came as a third American health worker tested positive
for the deadly virus while working with patients in Liberia, the
worst-hit country.
“My heart was deeply saddened, but my faith was not shaken, when I
learned another of our missionary doctors contracted Ebola,” said Bruce
Johnson, president of the SIM Christian missionary group for whom the
unnamed American worked.
Two fellow US health workers – Dr. Kent Brantly and nurse Nancy
Writebol who contracted the virus responded positively to the ZMapp
serum and were flown home to rest after the successful treatment.
The latest US victim had not been working directly with Ebola
patients, and it is not yet clear how he caught the disease, which is
usually fatal.
Slamming what she called a “global coalition of inaction,” Liu called
on the international community to fund more beds for a regional network
of field hospitals, dispatch trained civilian and military biohazard
experts and deploy mobile laboratories across Guinea, Sierra Leone and
Liberia.
Senior UN officials, on the other hand urged diplomats to cable their
capitals to send money, doctors and protective gear to the affected
region.
MSF said the crisis was particularly acute in Monrovia, where it estimated that “800 additional beds are needed”.
“Every day we have to turn sick people away because we are too full”,
said Stefan Liljegren, MSF’s coordinator at the ELWA Three Ebola unit
in Monrovia.
Aside from overcrowded centers, people were dying in their communities, too.
“In Sierra Leone, highly infectious bodies are rotting in the streets,” MSF added.
The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Dr. Thomas Frieden who has been briefing U.S. President Barack Obama on
the outbreak, said there was still a window of opportunity, but “that
window is closing.”
“We need action now to scale up the response. We know how to stop
Ebola. The challenge is to scale it up to the massive levels needed to
stop this outbreak,” he said.
“The virus is moving faster than anyone anticipated. We need to move fast.”
More than 3,500 cases have been confirmed so far, with more than
1,500 deaths, making the outbreak the largest and most complex since the
disease was first identified in 1976. Three countries in West Africa –
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – account for most of the cases, but
there have also been confirmed cases in Nigeria and Senegal.
A separate strain of the virus has been detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 53 cases confirmed there.
Public health officials said the rate at which new cases were being
identified was rising. “We understand the outbreak is moving out of our
grasp,” said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations special envoy for the
Ebola crisis.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, said
“the outbreak will get worse before it gets better, and it requires a
well-coordinated big surge of outbreak response urgently.” Her agency
has described the outbreak as “a global threat,” one whose magnitude Dr.
Chan said “we all underestimated.”
At current infection rates, the WHO fears it could take six to nine
months and at least $490 million (373 million euros) to bring the
outbreak under control, by which time more than 20,000 people could be
affected.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization issued an alert that
restrictions on movement in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had led to
panic buying, food shortages and severe price hikes.
“With the main harvest now at risk and trade and movements of goods
severely restricted, food insecurity is poised to intensify in the weeks
and months to come, warned Bukar Tijani, FAO regional representative
for Africa.
In Liberia, which has been hardest-hit with 694 deaths, the price of
the national staple cassava on market stalls in Monrovia went up 150
percent within the first weeks of August, the FAO said.
“This situation may have social repercussions that could lead to
subsequent impact on the disease containment,” said Vincent Martin, head
of the FAO’s Resilience Hub in Dakar, Senegal.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) launched an emergency operation
on Tuesday to get 65,000 tons of food to 1.3 million people in the
worst-hit areas.
At Monrovia’s John F. Kennedy Medical Center (JFK) scores of staff
went on strike to protest against working conditions and unpaid bonuses.
Amid shortages of equipment and trained staff, more than 120 healthcare
workers have died in West Africa in the Ebola outbreak.
“Health workers have died (fighting Ebola), including medical doctors
at … JFK and to have them come to work without food on their table, we
think that is pathetic,” George Williams, secretary general of the
Health Workers Association of Liberia, told Reuters.
Williams said healthcare workers at JFK, the country’s largest referral hospital, had gone unpaid for two months.
The Liberian government began offering a $1,000 bonus to any
healthcare workers who agreed to work in Ebola treatment facilities.
