The World Health Organization says its tally of Ebola deaths has passed the grim milestone of 10,000, mostly in West Africa.
The U.N. health agency says it’s the biggest-ever Ebola outbreak.
The Geneva-based agency said Thursday that Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone alone had reported 10,004 confirmed, probable and suspected deaths from Ebola since the outbreak began more than a year ago. There have also been eight deaths in Nigeria, six in Mali and one in the United States.
A massive international effort to stamp out the deadly disease has slowed the rate of infections, especially Liberia. But the virus appears stubbornly entrenched in parts of Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone has seen a worrying spike in confirmed Ebola cases over the past week in four districts, the head of the national Ebola response center in Freetown said Thursday.
New measures must now be put into place to contain the surges, said the head of the National Ebola Response Centre, Alfred Palo Conteh.
Fifteen cases were recorded Wednesday, along with 16 on Monday and Tuesday respectively, according to Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation.
“We are now on a bumpy road to zero number of cases to get to President Ernest Bai Koroma’s target of March 31,” said Palo Conteh. “It is frustrating.”
Palo Conteh said that new Ebola hotspots have emerged in recent days in Cabala Town and Magazine Cut in the east of the capital, Freetown, where a number of confirmed cases have been recorded. The other hotspot is in the west of Freetown.
“The problem with the Western Area is that it is densely populated and people behave differently,” he said. “People are becoming complacent.”
Officials on Thursday said a British military health care worker in Sierra Leone who has tested positive for Ebola is being transferred back to Britain for specialized treatment at the isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Two other UK health care workers are also being brought back to Britain for assessment as a precaution.