Sierra Leone - ?Entire villages disappeared?: Ebola deaths ?underreported? - MSF

[Gert van der Hoek]

?Entire villages disappeared?: Ebola deaths in Sierra Leone ?underreported?

Published time: November 01, 2014

Ebola?s toll on Sierra Leone is much greater than previously thought, with entire villages killed off by the virus. This means up to 20,000 people could have succumbed to the disease by now, a senior coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) believes.

According to Rony Zachariah, coordinator of operational research for MSF, the Ebola impact on Sierra Leone is in fact ?under-reported,? AFP quotes.

?The situation is catastrophic. There are several villages and communities that have been basically wiped out. In one of the villages I went to, there were 40 inhabitants and 39 died,? Zachariah told the agency. ?Whole communities have disappeared but many of them are not in the statistics. The situation on the ground is actually much worse.?

The latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) put the total number of dead at 4,951 out of 13,567 recorded cases.

But the real total could be up to 20,000 people dead, Zachariah argues. ?The WHO says there is a correction factor of 2.5, so maybe it is 2.5 times higher and maybe that is not far from the truth. It could be 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000.?

Zachariah also highlighted the shortage of healthcare workers in the country.

More: RT.com

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Sierra Leone - ?Entire villages disappeared?: Ebola deaths ?underreported? - MSF

Ebola outbreak: Virus 'spreading quickly' in Sierra Leone

Sunday 02 November 2014

Ebola in Sierra Leone is spreading nine times faster than it was two months ago, according to the African Governance Initiative

Just as the Ebola crisis in Liberia appears to be beginning to improve, the outbreak in neighbouring Sierra Leone takes a turn for the worse.

ampaign group African Governance Initiative (AGI) has said the number of Ebola cases in Sierra Leone is rising "frighteningly quickly," up to 9 times faster than it was just two months ago.

Sierra Leone's rural areas are worst affected by the virus, but the group claims the situation is also escalating in capital city Freetown, where there are six times the number of cases per day as there were during the summer.

Only in the northern region of Bombali has the outbreak begun to slow.

More: Independent


Ebola rapidly advancing in rural Sierra Leone: AGI report

AFP - 02 Nov 2014

11/2/2014 - 19:55 GMT

Ebola is spreading up to nine times faster in parts of Sierra Leone than two months ago, a report by the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) said on Sunday.

"Whilst new cases appear to have slowed in Liberia, Ebola is continuing to spread frighteningly quickly in parts of Sierra Leone," said the AGI report.

On average, 12 new cases a day were seen in the rural areas surrounding Freetown in late October, compared with 1.3 cases in early September, the report said, a nine fold increase.

Transmission was also increasing rapidly in the capital Freetown, with the average number of daily cases six times higher than two months ago.

The analysis was based on three-day averages of new cases recorded by Sierra Leone's health ministry.

More: Relief Web