More efforts needed to end Ebola

December 28 marks one year after a two year old boy in Meliando, a remote village in Gueckedou District of Guinea, died and later identified as the first case of Ebola in West Africa, further triggering into the unprecedented Ebola outbreak in the history.

The World Health Organization (WHO) was firstly notified of the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Guinea on March 23. The virus, with the fatality rate up to 90 percent, quickly crossed the border and geographically spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

On August 8, WHO declared the epidemic to be a "public health emergency of international concern".

By mid-September, the numbers of reported cases and deaths were growing exponentially from week to week despite multinational efforts to control the spread of infection in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States of America also reported the imported cases and local transmission.

According to the latest figures from WHO, since the first Ebola case in West Africa occurred, a total of 19,497 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of Ebola virus disease have been reported in four affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Mali and Sierra Leone) and four previously affected countries (Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States of America), including 7,588 reported deaths.

WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told Xinhua that weak health system, facing Ebola outbreak for the first time, which means population did not know much about the virus and there are some initial resistance from the population, all which led to spread of the virus beyond first initial villages in Guinea first year.

However, with the valiant efforts from the three heavily-affected countries, aid organizations and international communities, interventions have been moved forward in line with the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) aim to conduct 100 percent of burials safely and with dignity, and to isolate and treat 100 percent of Ebola cases by January 1, 2015.

At a national level, the capacity to isolate and treat Ebola patients has improved in all three countries since the commencement of the emergency response. The number of trained burial teams has significantly grown in each of the three countries in the past month. Every district that has reported Ebola case in the three countries has access to a laboratory within 24 hours from sample collection.

WHO noted the reported case incidence is fluctuating in Guinea and declining in Liberia. In Sierra Leone, there are signs that the increase in incidence has slowed, and that incidence may no longer be increasing.

"You remember in September, we had really difficult situation where the number of cases was doubling every four weeks, now we managed to slow down in many areas," said Jasarevic , "We are seeing that the number of cases is not rising exponentially anymore, but this outbreak is not uneven. "

For instance, western Sierra Leone is now experiencing the most intense transmission in the affected countries, and response efforts have been strengthened to curb the spread of disease in the area.

He warned there are not enough measures being put in place, still number of newly infected people is going up. "Basically as we slow down the virus, we are bending this curve, we need to go really actively be more aggressive to try to get to zero," he added.

He said to build more treatment centers, to have more health workers who are trained and equipped in working those centers and to have more burial teams that working on the ground conduct burials needed to be addressed. Instead of just treating those who come to treatment centers, he added the active surveillance team also needed in the next phrase.

"Everyone has to continue their work, countries who are helping WHO, UN Mission on Ebola response and other partners should continue to provide their support so really those countries can receive the assistance they need," he said.

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