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Reuters

The world is falling behind in a desperate race stop the deadly Ebola outbreak, a top UN official warned on Tuesday amid dire predictions that thousands of new infections are possible before year’s end.
“Ebola got a head start on us,” said Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response.

“It is far ahead of us, it is running faster than us, and it is winning the race,” the Briton told the UN Security Council in New York, by remote link from UNMEER headquarters in Accra, Ghana.
“If Ebola wins, we the peoples of the United Nations lose so very much,” he said.
The warning comes as a second Texas healthcare worker who treated the first patient in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola has tested positive for the disease.
The worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, was immediately isolated after reporting a fever on Tuesday, the department said.
“Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored,” the department said.
The news comes just days after another nurse, 26-year-old Nina Pham, became the first person infected by Ebola in the United States while caring for Duncan during much of his 11 days in the hospital. He died on October 8.
The UN official made his remarks as the World Health Organization said the Ebola infection rate could soon reach 10,000 a week as world leaders prepared to hold talks on the crisis at the United Nations.
“We either stop Ebola now or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan,” Banbury stressed.
He said that with infection rates rising exponentially every day, UNMEER will need 7,000 beds for treatment.
“There’s much bad news about Ebola but the good news is we know how to stop it,” said Banbury.
But to push back the spread “we must defeat Ebola and we must do it fast,” he said.
WHO assistant director general Bruce Aylward, describing his figures as a working forecast, said the epidemic “could reach 5,000 to 10,000 cases per week by the first week of December.”
The latest death toll is 4,447, from 8,914 recorded infection cases, Aylward said as the worst-ever Ebola outbreak spirals in the three hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The WHO has called current Ebola outbreak the most severe in modern times.
On Monday, US President Barack Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for the international campaign against the haemorrhagic virus, which is killing seven out of every ten people infected, to be intensified.
Governments in west Africa have been scrambling to contain the epidemic, with patients in the Liberian capital describing devastating scenes as patients struggled to survive during a strike by health workers.
A 56-year-old Sudanese doctor who had worked as a UN volunteer in Liberia died of Ebola late Monday after arriving in Germany last week for treatment.
Outside west Africa, medical staff have also been particularly at risk during the crisis, with at least two cases of contamination reported despite stringent safety protocols.
Meanwhile, a nurse in the city of Dallas, Texas, Nina Pham, said she was “doing well” after catching the virus while caring for a Liberian Ebola patient, but authorities warned 76 workers may have been exposed during his 10-day stay in the hospital.
Spanish nurse Teresa Romero, 44, is thought to have caught Ebola while treating an elderly missionary who was infected in Sierra Leone and died on September 25.
	 
 


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Ebola virus

Second Texas Ebola case as UN warns infections could to soar to ‘10,000 a week’

A member of the National Health Institute takes part during a display of the use of a B3 suit of biological protection, in the city of Bogota, capital of Colombia. Photo: Xinhua

UN Ebola mission chief Anthony Banbury speaks to members of the United Nations Security Council during a meeting on the Ebola crisis in New York. Photo: Reuters

Peptide's are frozen with liquid nitrogen to store them until they are used to see if they are a potential new drug candidates for testing against a part of Ebola that is vulnerable to drugs, at the University of Utah. Photo: AFP

Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, former Medical Director of Samaritan's Purse Ebola Care Center in Liberia, joins a hearing on Ebola on Capitol Hill in Washington in September. Photo: AP

Hazmat workers move waste barrells to the back of an apartment where the female nurse diagnosed with the Ebola virus resides in Dallas, Texas. Photo: AFP

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Volunteers on their way to bury the body of a person who died from Ebola in Waterloo, Sierra Leone. Photo: AFP

Health workers load a body infected with Ebola virus onto a pickup truck in Monrovia, capital of Liberia. Photo: Xinhua

Petri dishes grow bacteria to help determine drug candidates for testing new drugs against a part of Ebola that is vulnerable to drugs, at the University of Utah. Photo: AFP

Arrival of Ebola spreads alarm among US air crews and passengers

Hazmat teams in blue suits board the US Airways jet after a passenger on a Philadelphia flight joked that he had Ebola. Photo: SCMP

Nina Pham is the first person to have contracted Ebola in the US.

Brace for Ebola, WHO chief tells East Asia

Margaret Chan urged East Asian and Pacific countries to strengthen defences against the Ebola outbreak.

A Liberian burial squad carry the body of an Ebola victim in Marshall, Liberia on September 25, 2014. Photo: EPA

Second Texas health worker tests positive for Ebola

Health care workers wait for the arrival of a possible Ebola patient at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Photo: AFP

A hazmat costume with a respirator

News

World

Warning comes as second Texas healthcare worker tests positive for Ebola


The world is falling behind in a desperate race stop the deadly Ebola outbreak, a top UN official warned as a second Texas healthcare worker tested positive for the disease on Wednesday.


Update | Second Texas Ebola case as UN warns infections could to soar to ‘10,000 a week’

Warning comes as second Texas healthcare worker tests positive for Ebola