UN to miss Ebola target due to rising Sierra Leone cases

The United Nations Ebola emergency response mission will not fully meet its December 1st target for containing the virus due to escalating numbers of cases in Sierra Leone, according to the head of the organisation.

The mission set the goal in September of having 70 per cent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 per cent of victims safely buried. That target will be achieved in some areas, Andrew Banbury said, citing progress in Liberia.

“We are going to exceed the December 1st targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground,” he said.

The death toll in the worst Ebola epidemic on record has risen to 5,459 out of 15,351 cases identified in eight countries by November 18th, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. Almost all those cases are in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Rural regions

Mr Banbury said the areas of greatest concern are in rural parts of Sierra Leone as well as the city of Makeni in the centre of the country and Port Loko in the northwest and the capital Freetown. To combat rural cases, health workers need to deploy rapid response units complete with specialists and equipment that can be flown by helicopter to remote villages at the first sign of the disease’s spread, he said.

The UN emergency response mission was set up to provide co-ordination, policy and logistics rather than to treat patients. It needs more resources to halt Ebola as quickly as possible but the emphasis now is on allocating existing resources in the smartest way, said Mr Banbury.

“Earlier decisions about the need for rapid construction of large ETU’s [Ebola treatment centres] were taken in a certain context where that’s what made sense . . . Those efforts were to a large degree successful. But in the meantime the disease has spread,” he said.

He said surveillance to prevent further cross-border spread of Ebola must be also improved, given the transmission from Guinea into Mali, where at least six people have died.

Brig Gen Frank Tate, deputy commanding general of US forces helping Liberia fight Ebola, said there is a dramatic improvement in the country worst-hit by the outbreak. – (Reuters)