1.4 Million Ebola Infections Possible by January, U.S. Forecasts
By Reuters
Filed: 9/23/14 at 3:27 PM | Updated: 9/23/14 at 3:41 PM
Extracted from: http://www.newsweek.com/us-forecasts-more-500000-ebola-cases-west-africa-272763
1 NEW YORK/GENEVA (Reuters) - Global experts issued stark new warnings of the scale of West Africa's Ebola outbreak on Tuesday, with the U.S. government estimating between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January.
2 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its projection was based on data from late August and did not take into account a planned U.S. mission to fight the disease, so the upper end of the forecast was unlikely.
3 However, it followed research by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College, which estimated that 20,000 people risked infection within six weeks – months earlier than previous forecasts. It warned that the disease might become a permanent feature of life in West Africa.
4 The worst Ebola outbreak on record has already killed over 2,800 people –more than the combined total of all previous outbreaks. The disease has marched across much of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing dozens of health workers and crippling economies recovering from years of conflict.
5 Outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal appear for now to have been contained. But nations across the region fear contagion and, against expert advice, have shuttered borders and restricted travel,complicating international efforts to fight the disease.
6"I am confident the direst projections will not come to pass," CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.
7"Asurge now can break the back of the epidemic," Frieden said. "If you get enough people effectively isolated, the epidemic can be stopped."
8 Amid complaints from aid workers and regional leaders that the world was doing too little, U.S. President Barack Obama last week announced plans to send 3,000 troops to build 17 treatment centers and train thousands of healthcare workers.
9 The U.S. move has been welcomed, but it was accompanied by calls for other nations to follow suit, since the disease was still spreading faster than the moves being made to contain it.
10 Underscoring this gap, a senior U.N. official in Liberia, the worst-hit nation, said on Tuesday that 150 foreign experts were in the country but another 600 to 700 were needed.
11 Antonio Vigilante, head of the U.N. Development Programme in Liberia, said Liberia now had 350 to 400 beds for Ebola patients, but that fell far short of the 2,000 needed.
12 "We have announcements that more will come but very small numbers," Vigilante added. "The American military are bringing in a camp hospital, but it is for 25 beds with medical staff.And so there are still very few. Even if we are at 2,000 beds two or three weeks from now, the cases we\\\'ll have in any single day may be more than that," he said.
13 Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf called the CDC predictions "horrendous" and "scary." But now that structures had been put in place, she said, the U.S. effort would help ensure the outbreak would decline as fast as it spread.
14 "I believe that, given another couple of weeks, we shall see that this major effort begins to show results," she said, via Skype to an audience at Georgetown University inWashington, DC.
15 In a bid to fill the void, Liberia is now planning to train some 40,000 community workers.
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