On Now
Weekdays 19:00 - 23:00
OFM Nights Ashmund
NEXT: 23:00 - 23:59 Overnight with Oscar
Listen Live Streams

World News

Ebola crisis: WHO signals help for Africa to stop spread

───   05:28 Fri, 17 Oct 2014

Ebola crisis: WHO signals help for Africa to stop spread | News Article

Geneva - The World Health Organization is to "ramp up" efforts to prevent Ebola spreading beyond the three countries most affected by the deadly virus.

Fifteen African countries are being prioritised, top WHO official Isabelle Nuttall told a Geneva news conference.

They will receive more help in areas including prevention and protection.

But former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said he is "bitterly disappointed" with the international community's response.

In an interview with the BBC's Newsnight programme, Mr Annan said richer countries should have moved faster.

"If the crisis had hit some other region it probably would have been handled very differently.

"In fact when you look at the evolution of the crisis, the international community really woke up when the disease got to America and Europe. And yet we should have known that in this interconnected world it was only a matter of time."


Ebola continues to blight the Liberian capital, where this NGO worker (l) takes medication to a quarantined family 'Spike'

In Geneva, the WHO's Dr Nutall said the transmission of the Ebola virus remained intense in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - the three countries at the centre of the Ebola outbreak.

There was a "spike" in the Guinean capital, Conakry, she said, and "intense transmission" in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

In the Liberian capital, Monrovia, she spoke of "significant underreporting" and problems with data-gathering making it hard to reach firm conclusions. But there was a drop in the number of cases in Lofa district.

Overall, cases were doubling every four weeks, said Dr Nuttall, the WHO's Director of Global Capacities, Alerts and Response, and the death toll was expected to go above 4,500 this week.

Countries in the region must be prepared, she said, listing Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Mauritania, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Togo.

She highlighted four nations directly bordering the worst affected area - Ivory Coast, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Senegal.

"We will ramp up our support to the countries. We will work with them on a plan."

BBC News

@ 2024 OFM - All rights reserved Disclaimer | Privacy Policy | We Use Cookies - OFM is a division of Central Media Group (PTY) LTD.