United Nation's Ebola chief David Nabarro said that the recent, tremendous international response to the Ebola epidemic gives hope that the outbreak might end in 2015, and at the same time warned that the fight against the disease was still in its preliminary stages.
"Until the last case of Ebola is under treatment, we have to stay on full alert. It's still bad," David Nabarro said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Last month, Nabarro had said that Ebola cases were increasing two-fold every three to four weeks, and had warned that without large-scale international efforts, Ebola could not be wiped out from the world. However, Nabarro said Thursday that the Ebola infection rate appeared to have come down in certain regions of West Africa, though it continues in other Ebola hotspots.
Nabarro said that the number of beds for treating Ebola patients in the Ebola-stricken West African countries have increased tremendously, compared to two months ago, and will help in preventing the spread of the virus.
The international response last month and the involvement of local communities are also an encouraging sign that the outbreak was calming down.
At the same time, Nabarro also warned that sometimes a reduction in Ebola cases can unexpectedly be followed by a sudden increase.
"So I must stress to you that we are really not saying to the world that the job is even half done or a quarter done," he said.
Meanwhile, U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) said that the number of Ebola cases were rising in Sierra Leone because of shortage of treatment centers.
UNMEER also said that shortage of food supplies could be forcing people to leave quarantined areas, which will result in the spread of the disease, reported Reuters.
Sierra Leone's Deputy Health Minister, Madina Radman, said that people had lost confidence in hospitals due to the countries' failure in separating its Ebola treatment centers from other treatment facilities.
She also said that around 50 percent of the deaths in the country were not due to Ebola, but due to other diseases as people were scared to go to the Ebola treatment centers.
