The death toll from the Ebola epidemic rose to 4,922 out of 10,141 known cases in eight countries through October 23, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Saturday. The three worst-hit countries of West Africa, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, account for the bulk, recording 4,912 deaths out of 10,114 cases, the WHO said in its update.
The overall figures include outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal, deemed by the WHO to be now over, as well as isolated cases in Spain, the United States and a single case in Mali. But the true toll may be three times as much: by a factor of 1.5 in Guinea, 2 in Sierra Leone and 2.5 in Liberia, while the death rate is thought to be about 70% of all cases.
Explaining these projections, the WHO said many families are keeping infected people at home rather than putting them into isolation in treatment centres, some of which have refused patients due to overcrowding. The UN agency, sounding an ominous note, said out of the eight districts of Liberia and Guinea sharing a border with Ivory Coast, only two have yet to report confirmed or probable Ebola cases.
vaccine trials to start in December
LONDON: One million doses of an Ebola vaccine will be produced by the end of 2015, the World Health Organisation has announced. Vaccines, ‘several hundred thousand’ of which will be produced in the first half of the year would be initially made available to front line health workers in West Africa as early as by December 2014.
Marie Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general, said: ‘While we hope that the massive response, which has been put in place will have an impact on the epidemic, it is still prudent to prepare to have as much vaccine available if they are proven effective. If still the massive effort in response is not sufficient, then vaccine would be a very important tool. And even if the epidemic would be already receding by the time we have vaccine available, the modelling seems to say vaccine may still have an impact on controlling the epidemic.’
The third meeting of the emergency committee convened by the WHO director-general regarding the 2014 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa was conducted on Wednesday.
This meeting was convened in advance of the three-month date of the expiration of the temporary recommendations issued on August 8, 2014 and their extension on September 22, 2014, owing to the increase in numbers of cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the new exportation of cases resulting in limited transmission in Spain and US.