Ebola infections could reach 1.4 million by January 2015

By Caribbean Medical News Staff
According to the US Centres for Disease Control, infections from Ebola could reach 1.4 million in Sierra Leone and Liberia alone by the middle of January 2015 if the global community does not move swiftly to contain this illness. President Obama made a plea to the international community in a speech while on his trip to the United Nations in the New York.
Ebola cases in West Africa have reached an estimated 5,800 infections in people and more than 2800 people have died according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
President Obama said that the US does not have the capacity to assist in the Ebola fight and while the US has established a military command and control centre, there is an inadequate response from the global community. He said that his command centre is already on the ground in Monrovia, Liberia but that assistance was required from the rest of the world in the fight against Ebola.
According to CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden, the possible trajectory in infections is frightening.
“One of the things that’s been so striking is how fluid things have been on the ground, even a week or two ago, I would have expected things to look differently than they do now,” said Frieden.
“If you get enough people effectively isolated, the epidemic can be stopped. Related to that, when you reach a higher enough number, the number of cases plummets rapidly, almost as rapidly as the exponential rise we’re seeing now,” he continued.
The CDC, the Department of Defense and USAID will send resources including public information kits as well as practical in-home sanitization kits and other resources and manpower and are joined by others to assist West Africa in fighting the epidemic that the World Health Organization has deemed “an international emergency” according to Gayle Smith, personal assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director of the National Security Council.
“We think these things that were not fully in play are things that can contribute to bending the [epidemic’s] curve,” Smith said.
Obama committed the US to sending 3 000 military personnel to Liberia in a press conference he hosted after a tour of the CDC to discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In that statement, Obama indicated that the US will work with the UK, France, UNICEF and the World Bank among other organizations to stem the tide of this deadly disease pointing out that together they have committed $1 million in supplies to the region.
“Ebola outbreaks usually end when people stop touching the sick,” said Dr Armand Sprecher, an infectious diseases specialist at Doctors Without Borders. “The outbreak is not going to end tomorrow but there are things we can do to reduce the case count.”
Health officials in West Africa have launched campaigns to teach people about the symptoms of Ebola and not to touch the sick or the dead according to an Associated Press report. However, Obama has said that the health care systems in the affected countries have broken down and “people are dying in the streets”.