The rate of new Ebola infections in Liberia appears to be declining
and could represent a genuine trend, the World Health Organization said
Wednesday, but the epidemic is far from over.
The disease is still raging in parts of Sierra Leone and there is still a risk that the decline in Liberia won't be sustained, Dr. Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general for WHO, warned reporters.
Several times during the outbreak officials have thought the disease's spread was slowing, only to surge again later.
Officials have often blamed those false lulls on cases hidden because people were too afraid to seek treatment, wanted to bury their relatives themselves or simply weren't in contact with authorities.
But now there are some positive signs: There are empty beds in treatment centers in Liberia and the number of burials has declined. There may be as much as a 25 percent week-on-week reduction in cases in Liberia, Aylward said.
Throughout the Ebola outbreak, WHO has warned that its figures have been incomplete and the number of cases are likely vastly underreported. That is still a concern, Aylward said, but the trend nonetheless appears to be real.
"The epidemic (in Liberia) may be slowing down," he said during a telephone press conference from Geneva.
The slowdown could be attributable to a rapid increase in safe burials of Ebola victims, an uptick in the number of sick people being isolated and major public awareness campaigns on how to stop transmission.
So far, more than 13,700 people have been sickened in the outbreak, which has hit Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone hardest.
That figure, released Wednesday by the World Health Organization, includes cases from earlier in the outbreak that were recently found in patient databases but had never been reported another sign of the difficulty of providing real-time, accurate data. Nearly 5,000 people have died.
Liberia alone has recorded more than 6,500 cases. Aylward cautioned against reading too much into the decline there, saying that any let-up in the response could allow the disease to surge again.
"Am I hopeful? I'm terrified the information will be misinterpreted and people would start to think, oh great, this is under control," he said. "That's like saying your pet tiger is under control."
Liberia's Red Cross said Tuesday that teams collected 117 bodies last week from the county that includes Monrovia, down from the high of 315 in one week in September, and the government reported last week that only about half of the available beds in treatment centers were occupied.
Others were more reluctant to call the decline a trend.
Ebola outbreaks come in waves, warned Benoit Carpentier, a spokesman for the International Federation of the Red Cross. Red Cross figures show deaths are still increasing outside Monrovia, he noted.
It's possible that at least some of the decline is because cases are being hidden — a phenomenon that has plagued the response to the outbreak since the beginning, said Ella Watson-Stryker, a health promotion manager for Doctors Without Borders in Liberia. CONTINUE READING
The disease is still raging in parts of Sierra Leone and there is still a risk that the decline in Liberia won't be sustained, Dr. Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general for WHO, warned reporters.
Several times during the outbreak officials have thought the disease's spread was slowing, only to surge again later.
Officials have often blamed those false lulls on cases hidden because people were too afraid to seek treatment, wanted to bury their relatives themselves or simply weren't in contact with authorities.
But now there are some positive signs: There are empty beds in treatment centers in Liberia and the number of burials has declined. There may be as much as a 25 percent week-on-week reduction in cases in Liberia, Aylward said.
Throughout the Ebola outbreak, WHO has warned that its figures have been incomplete and the number of cases are likely vastly underreported. That is still a concern, Aylward said, but the trend nonetheless appears to be real.
"The epidemic (in Liberia) may be slowing down," he said during a telephone press conference from Geneva.
The slowdown could be attributable to a rapid increase in safe burials of Ebola victims, an uptick in the number of sick people being isolated and major public awareness campaigns on how to stop transmission.
So far, more than 13,700 people have been sickened in the outbreak, which has hit Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone hardest.
That figure, released Wednesday by the World Health Organization, includes cases from earlier in the outbreak that were recently found in patient databases but had never been reported another sign of the difficulty of providing real-time, accurate data. Nearly 5,000 people have died.
Liberia alone has recorded more than 6,500 cases. Aylward cautioned against reading too much into the decline there, saying that any let-up in the response could allow the disease to surge again.
"Am I hopeful? I'm terrified the information will be misinterpreted and people would start to think, oh great, this is under control," he said. "That's like saying your pet tiger is under control."
Liberia's Red Cross said Tuesday that teams collected 117 bodies last week from the county that includes Monrovia, down from the high of 315 in one week in September, and the government reported last week that only about half of the available beds in treatment centers were occupied.
Others were more reluctant to call the decline a trend.
Ebola outbreaks come in waves, warned Benoit Carpentier, a spokesman for the International Federation of the Red Cross. Red Cross figures show deaths are still increasing outside Monrovia, he noted.
It's possible that at least some of the decline is because cases are being hidden — a phenomenon that has plagued the response to the outbreak since the beginning, said Ella Watson-Stryker, a health promotion manager for Doctors Without Borders in Liberia. CONTINUE READING
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