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 At least 1,427 people have died and 2,615 have been infected since
the disease was detected deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea
in March.
The WHO has deployed nearly 400 of its own staff and partner
organizations to fight the epidemic of the highly contagious
hemorrhagic fever, which has struck Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea
and Nigeria. A separate outbreak was confirmed in Democratic
Republic of Congo on Sunday.
Nigeria's health minister said on Tuesday his country had "thus far
contained" the Ebola outbreak.
One of the deadliest diseases known to man, Ebola is transmitted by
contact with body fluids. The current outbreak has killed at least
120 healthcare workers.
The WHO said it had withdrawn staff from the laboratory testing for
Ebola at Kailahun - one of only two in Sierra Leone - after a
Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola.
"It's a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our
remaining workers," WHO spokeswoman Christy Feig said, without
specifying how long the measure would last.
"After our assessment, they will return."
Feig said she could not assess what impact the withdrawal of WHO
staff would have on the fight against Ebola in the Kailahun, the
area hardest hit by the disease. The WHO said in a later statement
that staff would return after an investigation was completed, adding
that testing would continue in the meantime at the Kenema
laboratory.
The Senegalese medic - the first worker deployed by WHO to be
infected - will be evacuated from Sierra Leone in the coming days,
Feig said. He is currently being treated at a government hospital in
the eastern town of Kenema.
Separately, Public Health Agency of Canada spokesman Sean Upton said
late on Tuesday the agency was planning to withdraw its three-person
mobile laboratory team from Sierra Leone. The agency could not
confirm immediately whether the lab was a different one from the
laboratory that the WHO closed.
The Canadian team was recalled because three people in their hotel
complex were diagnosed with Ebola, although Upton said none of the
Canadians had direct contact with any of the sick people and were
not showing any symptoms of Ebola.
CONGO OUTBREAK
With its resources stretched by the West African outbreak, medical
charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday it could
provide only limited help to tackle Congo's outbreak.
A report from the U.N. mission in Congo on Tuesday said 13 people
there had died from Ebola, including five health workers.
Congo said on Sunday it would quarantine the area around the town of
Djera, in the isolated northwestern jungle province of Equateur,
where a high number of suspected cases has been reported. It is
Congo's seventh outbreak since Ebola was discovered in 1976 in
Equateur, near the Ebola river.
Congo's Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on Sunday the
outbreak in Equateur was a different strain of the virus from the
deadly Zaire version in West Africa, although further tests are
planned in a German laboratory.
"Usually, we would be able to mobilize specialist hemorrhagic fever
teams, but we are currently responding to a massive epidemic in West
Africa," said Jeroen Beijnberger, MSF medical coordinator in Congo.
"This is limiting our capacity to respond to the epidemic in
Equateur Province."
However, the charity said it would send doctors, nurses and
logistics experts to the region and would work with the government
to open an Ebola case management center in Lokolia.
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Louise Roland-Gosselin, deputy head of mission for MSF in Congo,
said Congolese Ebola experts working in West Africa should return to
their own country to assist with the outbreak there. "MSF can't do
it alone," she said.
The WHO plans to send protective equipment for medical staff in
Equateur.
A 65-year-old woman with Ebola-like symptoms died in Equateur's
capital Mbandaka, health workers said on Tuesday, raising concerns
of a possible spread to an urban center.
Health Minister Kabange Numbi confirmed the death but said the cause
was not yet known.
PRESIDENTIAL ORDER
Up to 90 percent of Ebola victims die, although the fatality rate in
the current outbreak is lower at close to 60 percent.
The only treatments are extremely rare, experimental and have so far
had mixed results. Of the six health workers known to have been
treated with unlicensed drug ZMapp, two have died.
Still, the first Briton to have contracted the deadly Ebola virus
while working in West Africa has decided to take the drug, the
London hospital where he is being treated said, adding that the
volunteer nurse was "in good spirits".
Sierra Leone and Liberia - struggling to recover from a decade of
civil war in the 1990s - have seen their healthcare systems
overwhelmed by Ebola, the first outbreak in West Africa.
In Liberia, the country that has reported the most Ebola deaths, the
health ministry has reported more than 200 new suspected, probable
and confirmed cases in a three-day period. Most of them occurred in
the seaside capital Monrovia, where two neighborhoods are under
army-backed quarantine.
Some Liberian officials have been fleeing the country or not turning
up at work for fear of contracting the virus, prompting President
Ellen Johnson on Tuesday to issue orders threatening those of
ministerial rank with dismissal.
More junior civil servants would have their salaries suspended, a
presidency official told Reuters. It was not clear how many
officials would be affected by the presidential order.
Liberia said a ban on travel to the region imposed by neighboring
countries was complicating the fight against Ebola and leading to
shortages of basic goods. British Airways said on Tuesday it planned
to extend a suspension of flights to Sierra Leone and Liberia until
Dec. 31 because of Ebola.
"Isolating Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is not in any way
contributing to the fight against this disease," Information
Minister Lewis Brown said. "How do we get in the kinds of supplies
that we need? How do we get experts to come to our country? Is that
African solidarity?"
(Additional reporting by Bienvenu-Marie Bakumanya in Kinshasa, James
Harding Giahyue in Monrovia and Emma Farge in Dakar, Rod Nickel in
Winnipeg and Jeffrey Hodgson in Toronto; Writing by Daniel Flynn;
Editing by Gareth Jones and Paul Tait)
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