Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'

[Pathfinder]

Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'
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Last updated: 02 Oct 2014 13:54

Five people are being infected with Ebola every hour in Sierra Leone and the rate is expected to double by the end of October, the Save the Children charity has warned.

Justin Forsyth, the chief executive of Save the Children charity, said on Thursday that "the scale of the Ebola epidemic is devastating and growing every day".

"We need a coordinated international response that ensures treatment centres are built and staffed immediately," Forsyth said.
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The number of cases was likely to be "massively" under-reported, as "untold numbers of children are dying anonymously at home or in the streets", it said.

"We are facing the frightening prospect of an epidemic which is spreading like wildfire across Sierra Leone, with the number of new cases doubling every three weeks," said Rob MacGillivray, the charity's country director in Sierra Leone .
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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/afric...wildfire-sierra-leone-201410213832994348.html

 

[AnnaLisa]

Re: Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'

Staggering.

 

[franzpick]

Re: Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'

My database only contains reported numbers (understated?) by WHO and the national ministries of health, and so is probably recording half or less of the total actual growth in cases, but even these limited statistics show the growing Sierra Leone EVD infection rate, which is far worse, and maybe less understated, than Liberia and Guinea.

For the 2 weeks 9/1 to 9/14 daily new SL cases averaged 26 per day. The next 2 weeks 9/15 to 9/28 averaged 39 new cases per day, up 50%. The last 10 days 9/21 to 9/30 averaged 52 cases/day, up 100%, and the last 6 days have averaged 58 cases/day, up 123%.

If the report of 90 new cases on 9/29 was not a mistake, or somehow represented several days data reported as 1 day, similar and surprisingly high new case numbers in the next few days will not surprise me.

 

[MHSC]

Re: Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'

franzpick,

Just wanted to thank you for what you do here. I don't have time to follow this as much as I would like and your evaluations are ever so helpful!

 

[AnnaLisa]

Re: Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'

Yes, likewise, thank you. I am not a math or stats type person, so, I appreciate your work and interpretation.

 

[Dani]

Re: Sierra Leone Ebola 'spreading like wildfire'

Wasn't it official government policy in Sierra Leone to report deaths as being caused by Ebola only if they were confirmed to be antibody positive? They've been under-reporting the number of deaths all along, until this week when they decided to change their reporting policy to include deaths among suspected, probable and confirmed like the other countries have done.

So given the fact that the consensus is that there's under-reporting of 2-3x overall, could the multiplier in Sierra Leone have been 5x the number of deaths?