Home> Health Ebola: Danger in Sierra Leone, Progress in Liberia

UPDATE WITH TEXT OF LATEST WHO REPORT

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/137376/1/roadmapsitrep_29Oct2014_eng.pdf

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                                      Oct. 30, 2014
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone --Liberia is making some progress in containing the Ebola outbreak while Sierra Leone is "in a crisis situation which is going to get worse," the top anti-Ebola officials in the two countries said.

The people of both countries must redouble efforts to stop the disease, which has infected more than 13,000 people and killed nearly 5,000, the officials said. Their assessments underscore that Ebola remains a constant threat until the outbreak is wiped out. It can appear to be on the wane, only to re-emerge in the same place or balloon elsewhere if people don't avoid touching Ebola patients or the bodies of those who succumb to the disease.

"We need to go ahead to stop the transmission in order to arrest the situation," Palo Conteh said late Wednesday in the Sierra Leone capital, in his first press conference since the president this month appointed him CEO of the National Ebola Response Center. Conteh was previously the defense minister....

...the outbreak is now hitting areas in and around Sierra Leone's capital, posing a huge threat, Conteh noted that it is on the wane in the former Ebola hotpots of Kenema and Kailahun, across the nation in the east.

"If people in other areas of the country copy the example of eastern Kailahun and Kenema Districts, then the spread of the disease will subside like in Kailahun and Kenema. As I speak, people (near the capital) are still touching people suspected with the Ebola disease, people are still burying corpses at night of those who have died of the disease," he said.

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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/liberia-official-good-progress-ebola-26565260