Sylvain Cherkaoui, Cosmos,
Courtesy of Doctors Without Borders
The World Health Organization announced the combined death toll from the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone reached 337, making this the worst ever surpassing the 1976 outbreak in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in which 280 died. Today's numbers are a 60% spike over the last June 4 numbers indicating that the outbreak is not dying out.
Michaeleen Doucleff of NPR, writes Doctors Aren't Sure How To Stop Africa's Deadliest Ebola Outbreak
More than 500 cases have been reported in three West African countries, and the death toll has risen to 337, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. That's up from 208 cases reported two weeks ago, a 60 percent spike.
"There are many villages in the eastern part of Sierra Leone that are basically devastated," virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University tells NPR's Jason Beaubien. "We walked into one village ... and we found 25 corpses. One house with seven people, all in one family, were dead.
"It's a very serious situation there," adds Garry, who just returned to the U.S. from West Africa. "This is about as bad as it [an Ebola outbreak] gets."
There are five strains of the Ebola virus which can have mortality rages between 40% to 90%. This new strain appears to be killing about two-thirds of those infected.
Symptoms of high fever, muscle pain, weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, external and internal bleeding, organ failure, and death can occur within 2 to 21 days from exposure.
Previous outbreaks have been relatively easy to contain because medical authorities quarantine the area, teach the population how to avoid its spread, and the infected population dies out relatively quickly.
In this case the virus has "popped up" in multiple locations, including more densely populated capital cities of Conakry, Guinea, and Liberia's capital Monrovia.
This could be due to more mobile populations in modern Africa, or perhaps, more than one case of animal to human transmission. Fruit bats are now thought to be the long-term reservoir, and other game animals such as infected primates, gazelles, and antelope can spread the disease as well.
The Editor of The Nigerian Guardian provide us with the breadown of the numbers by country in West Africa Ebola death toll hits 337.
These numbers are also from the World Health Organization.
Fresh data from the United Nations health agency showed that the number of deaths in Guinea, the hardest-hit country, has reached 264, while 49 had died in Sierra Leone and 24 in Liberia.
Including the deaths, 528 people across the three countries have contracted Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, the WHO said.
A majority of cases, 398 of them, have surfaced in Guinea, where west Africa’s first ever Ebola outbreak began in January.
Sierra Leone has registered 97 cases in total, while Liberia has seen 33.
Our prayers and best wishes are with all of the Ebola victims, their families and all the people of West Africa. We hope health officials can get this outbreak under control as quickly as possible.
