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 The health teams will travel to each district and region of Guinea,
Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries at the center of the
epidemic, to trace who each infected person has potentially
contacted.
The effort will run in parallel with measures to minimize the spread
of infection, such as treating all Ebola patients in specialized
centers and burying all victims safely.
But Phase Two of the plan is to contain the virus by understanding
its lines of transmission, said World Health Organization
Director-General Margaret Chan.
"You chase the virus. You hunt the virus. The virus lives in an
infected person so you chase every case, isolate them and then all
the people who come into contact with the infected person," Chan
told Reuters on a visit to West Africa.
She was accompanying U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on a
four-country tour to encourage health workers and focus global
attention on the fight against the epidemic.
The world's worst Ebola outbreak has killed 7,518 of 19,340
confirmed cases, according to WHO figures on Monday, though the
number of new cases is slowing in most places.
The disease spreads through contact with an infected person or
corpse, so family members who care for patients or people who
prepare victims for burial are at risk.
As a result, people often know how they fell ill. Patients who say
they do not know are a concern because their cases can signify
chains of transmission yet to be identified, Chan said.
"You don't have control of Ebola until you know where all your
transmission chains are and until your cases are coming from known
contact lists," said Bruce Aylward, WHO's head of Ebola response.
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"You always hear about disease detective work and that is what Ebola
is about now," he said. Contact-tracing involves visiting households
to pick up signs of illness, and requires cooperation from local
authorities and community leaders.
Illustrating the scale of the challenge, 25 percent of new cases in
Liberia are coming from new sources, Aylward said. By contrast,
officials in Guinea said in November all the cases in the capital
stemmed from just four chains of transmission.
The overall cost of the Ebola response could rise to around $4.1
billion, said U.N. Special Envoy on Ebola David Nabarro.
To accomplish Phase Two, the U.N. health agency will mobilize 900
epidemiologists, triple the number currently available, he said.
Around half will be foreigners.
The aim is to get teams in place by the end of January, following a
separate plan to get all patients treated and all victims safely
buried by the end of this month.
(Editing by Ed Cropley and Giles Elgood)
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