Ebola Is ?Disaster? of Scale Still Unknown, Relief Official Says

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/w...-still-unknown-relief-official-says.html?_r=0


Ebola Is ?Disaster? of Scale Still Unknown, Relief Official Says
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. and SHERI FINKAUG. 19, 2014

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is ?a complete disaster,? and health agencies do not yet grasp its scope, the president of the relief group Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday.

?No one yet has the full measure of the magnitude of this crisis,? the president, Dr. Joanne Liu, said in an interview. ?We don?t have good data collection. We don?t have enough surveillance.?...

 

[JimO]

Re: Ebola Is ?Disaster? of Scale Still Unknown, Relief Official Says

Doctors Without Borders: What We Need To Contain Ebola

-snip-

In an interview on All Things Considered, MSF's international president, Dr. Joanne Liu, tells NPR's Audie Cornish that they opened a new Ebola care center in Monrovia, Liberia, this weekend. It was equipped with 120 beds, and "all the beds got filled in one day."

"We're thinking about expanding, "she says. "But the reality is, we don't have a definitive picture of how many cases there are in the city right now."

-snip-

She says that MSF has been "ringing the alarm" since the beginning of the epidemic, but it's been slow wake-up call for the other NGOs. That's likely because past Ebola oubreaks were contained in a matter of weeks.

"But what is happening now is that we have cases in a highly dense, populated area like Monorovia, with 1.3 million," she says. Without the involvement of other organizations, she says, "we will not be able to contain the Ebola epidemic."

more...

http://www.gpb.org/news/2014/08/19/doctors-without-borders-what-we-need-to-contain-ebola

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Ebola Is ?Disaster? of Scale Still Unknown, Relief Official Says

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/...bola-outbreak-africa-medecins-sans-frontieres


World leaders 'failing to help' over Ebola outbreak in Africa
M?decins Sans Fronti?res chief claims response to catastrophe is 'almost zero', with nations most concerned with self protection
Lisa O'Carroll
The Guardian, Tuesday 19 August 2014 20.36 BST

The international community has made "almost zero" response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, with western leaders more interested in protecting their own countries than helping contain the crisis that has now claimed more than 1,200 lives, a senior international aid worker said on Tuesday.

Brice de la Vigne, the operations director of M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF), said politicians in industrialised countries urgently needed to take action, or risk the outbreak spreading much further. "Globally, the response of the international community is almost zero," he told the Guardian. "Leaders in the west are talking about their own safety and doing things like closing airlines ? and not helping anyone else."...