Int’l Ebola response ‘dangerously inadequate’

Nurse Anja Wolz, the emergency coordinator for the group, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday that while the Ebola outbreak has been out of control for months, it has taken the international health community a long time to react.

“The current international Ebola response remains dangerously inadequate,” she said, warning that the situation is more than an Ebola outbreak and that the humanitarian crisis is getting worse every day.

Meanwhile, the United Nations (UN) health agency the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the death of Ebola doctor Sahr Rogers, who was infected with the deadly virus while working in a clinic in Sierra Leone.

The WHO also said a Senegalese epidemiologist was airlifted this week to Germany for treatment. The infected doctor reportedly received treatment in a Hamburg hospital on Wednesday.

More than 1,400 people across Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria have been killed in the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, with the number of infection cases now standing at over 26,000.

Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

Ebola remains one of the world’s most virulent diseases, which kills between 25 to 90 percent of those who contract the virus.