World is losing battle to contain Ebola: Medecins Sans Frontieres
UN and Medecins Sans Frontieres implore countries worldwide to send more workers, saying the outbreak has been underestimated
The humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned that the world is losing the battle against Ebola and lamented that treatment centres in West Africa had been "reduced to places where people go to die alone".
In separate remarks after a United Nations meeting on the crisis, the World Health Organisation chief said everyone involved had underestimated the outbreak, which has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. UN officials implored governments worldwide to send medical workers and material contributions.
MSF, which has treated more than 1,000 Ebola patients in West Africa since March, was overwhelmed, said Dr Joanne Liu, its president. She called on other countries to contribute civilian and military medical personnel familiar with biological disasters.
Treatment centres are reduced to places where people go to die
"Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it," Liu said on Tuesday at a UN forum on the outbreak. "Ebola treatment centres are reduced to places where people go to die alone, where little more than palliative care is offered."
In Sierra Leone, she said, infectious bodies were rotting in the streets. Liberia had to build a new crematorium instead of new Ebola care centres.
At the UN meeting, WHO director Dr Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun thanked countries for helping but said: "We need more from you. And we also need those countries that have not come on board."
Later she warned that the outbreak would get worse before it got better.