Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
(CNN) -- The magnitude of the Ebola crisis in West Africa is "vastly" underestimated, the World Health Organization said this week, as the death toll rose to more than 1,000.
Ebola has infected at least 1,975 people in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began this year.
Of those, at least 1,069 have died, according to the WHO. It said the number reflects the count as of Monday.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time," the WHO said in a statement Thursday. "Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."
It did not provide an estimate of unreported cases.
The United Nations agency said it's teaming up with the affected countries to gather more on-the-ground intelligence for a coordinated response.
"WHO is mapping the outbreak, in great detail, to pinpoint areas of ongoing transmission and locate treatment facilities and supplies," it said.
Something that is vastly more important than a street negro being shot!
WHO: Evidence shows Ebola crisis 'vastly' underestimated
(CNN) -- The magnitude of the Ebola crisis in West Africa is "vastly" underestimated, the World Health Organization said this week, as the death toll rose to more than 1,000.
Ebola has infected at least 1,975 people in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began this year.
Of those, at least 1,069 have died, according to the WHO. It said the number reflects the count as of Monday.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time," the WHO said in a statement Thursday. "Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."
It did not provide an estimate of unreported cases.
The United Nations agency said it's teaming up with the affected countries to gather more on-the-ground intelligence for a coordinated response.
"WHO is mapping the outbreak, in great detail, to pinpoint areas of ongoing transmission and locate treatment facilities and supplies," it said.
Something that is vastly more important than a street negro being shot!
WHO: Evidence shows Ebola crisis 'vastly' underestimated
WHO: Ebola crisis 'vastly' underestimated - CNN.com
(CNN) -- The magnitude of the Ebola crisis in West Africa is "vastly" underestimated, the World Health Organization said this week, as the death toll rose to more than 1,000.
Ebola has infected at least 1,975 people in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began this year.
Of those, at least 1,069 have died, according to the WHO. It said the number reflects the count as of Monday.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time," the WHO said in a statement Thursday. "Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."
It did not provide an estimate of unreported cases.
The United Nations agency said it's teaming up with the affected countries to gather more on-the-ground intelligence for a coordinated response.
"WHO is mapping the outbreak, in great detail, to pinpoint areas of ongoing transmission and locate treatment facilities and supplies," it said.
The disease has already killed more than 1,400 people in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and Doctors Without Borders warned that the tremendous influx of patients in Liberia, in particular, is overwhelming their treatment centers there. "I wish I didn't have to say this, but it is going get worse before it gets better," Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said of the outbreak at the end of a visit to Liberia, where he described the situation as dire. Liberia has recorded the highest number of cases and deaths of any of the four countries. Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that a new treatment center recently opened in the country's capital with 120 beds filled up almost immediately.
The tremendous number of patients means that the medical charity is not able to provide those patients with intravenous treatments, a primary way doctors keep people who are losing a tremendous amount of fluid alive. The group did not mention Frieden's visit or recent U.N. ones, but it said discussions happening now about international coordination are coming too late and that there are countries that could make a dramatic difference if they provided more expertise and resources. It did not name the countries. "This is not only an Ebola outbreak - it is a humanitarian emergency, and it needs a full-scale humanitarian response," Lindis Hurum, the group's emergency coordinator in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, said in the statement.
During a training session participants listen as they stand over a mannequin on a stretcher during a training course to instruct non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers and doctors on how to deal with the Ebola virus in Brussels on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2014. The course, provided by Doctors Without Borders, trains volunteer and medical personnel on precautions to take when entering a zone that contains the Ebola virus.
Frieden travels next to Sierra Leone, where the loss of a third senior doctor has raised concerns about the country's ability to fight the outbreak. Dr. Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the eastern town of Kenema when he contracted Ebola, Sierra Leonean presidential adviser Ibrahim Ben Kargbo said Wednesday. Rogers' death marks yet another setback for Sierra Leone, a country still recovering from years of civil war, where there are only two doctors per 100,000 people, according to WHO. By comparison, there are 245 doctors per 100,000 in the United States.
Health workers have been especially vulnerable because of their close proximity to patients, who can spread the virus through bodily fluids. WHO has said that at least 240 health workers have been infected in this outbreak, more than in any other. One of those is an epidemiologist working with the WHO in Sierra Leone, who has been evacuated for treatment in Germany. "The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits," said Christy Feig, director of WHO communications.
MORE
Something that is vastly more important than a street negro being shot!
WHO: Evidence shows Ebola crisis 'vastly' underestimated
WHO: Ebola crisis 'vastly' underestimated - CNN.com
(CNN) -- The magnitude of the Ebola crisis in West Africa is "vastly" underestimated, the World Health Organization said this week, as the death toll rose to more than 1,000.
Ebola has infected at least 1,975 people in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began this year.
Of those, at least 1,069 have died, according to the WHO. It said the number reflects the count as of Monday.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time," the WHO said in a statement Thursday. "Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."
It did not provide an estimate of unreported cases.
The United Nations agency said it's teaming up with the affected countries to gather more on-the-ground intelligence for a coordinated response.
"WHO is mapping the outbreak, in great detail, to pinpoint areas of ongoing transmission and locate treatment facilities and supplies," it said.
Habakkuk 3:5Before Him goes pestilence, And plague comes after Him.
Luke 21:10Then He continued by saying to them, "Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, 11and there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
Revelation 6:8I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.
It's all been foretold, over 2000 years ago.
Underlining the immense risks taken by those working in West Africa to understand and combat the worsening Ebola outbreak, five co-authors of an important new Ebola study were killed by the virus before their research was published. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that the virus has mutated during the outbreak — something that could hinder diagnosis and treatment of the disease. The five deceased co-authors, who were from Sierra Leone’s Kenema Government Hospital Lassa fever facility, worked with the study’s lead researchers at Harvard University to examine the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. In all, the research involved more than 50 co-authors.
It’s an extraordinary study, and it came with an extraordinary toll. Pardi Sabeti, whose Harvard lab oversaw the genetic sequencing at the center of the research, told The Post’s Brady Dennis that the the experience of working on the international study was “one of the most rewarding and devastating experiences of my life,” with the thrill of conducting the collaborative research tempered by the sadness of losing numerous colleagues who were working on the front lines. The study demonstrates just how effective an international research effort can be in the middle of a global health crisis. Researchers sequenced the virus genomes from 78 patients in the current outbreak, starting with its early days in the spring.
Sheik Umar Khan, the head doctor fighting the deadly tropical virus Ebola in Sierra Leone, poses for a picture in Freetown in June. He died in July.
Among other things, the international team of researchers managed to trace the outbreak in Sierra Leone to a single funeral in the country. Researchers discovered that a pregnant Kenema Government Hospital Ebola patient had, along with about a dozen other women who were also infected, attended the funeral of a traditional healer who was treating Ebola victims on the Sierra Leone-Guinea border. Mbalu Fonnie, an experienced nurse at the Kenema Government Hospital, was among the five victims. Her specialty? Managing advanced Lassa fever infections — a disease with symptoms similar to Ebola — in pregnant women. Fonnie was caring for one of her co-workers, who was pregnant and infected with Ebola, when she contracted the disease herself. According to study co-author Robert Garry, Fonnie was the “matron of nursing” at the Sierra Leone hospital.
Alex Moigboi, Fonnie’s fellow nurse, who contracted Ebola while treating the same pregnant colleague. He had more than 10 years of experience working with Lassa fever patients. Alice Kovoma was also infected while helping Fonnie and Moigboi treat their colleague. Garry told Science that Kovoma was “a wonderful person … very dedicated and professional with a devotion to the patients and her teammates.” She was a nurse for six years in the Lassa fever ward. Mohamed Fullah worked as a lab technician on the study. He taught at Eastern Polytechnic College in Sierra Leone, and also worked in the Lassa fever facility. His colleagues believe that Fullah contracted the disease from a family member — several relatives had died of the virus in the current outbreak, which has killed at least 1,552 people, according to the World Health Organization. Sheik Umar Khan was the director of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation’s Lassa fever program and was directly involved in Sierra Leone’s national response to the Ebola outbreak. He was a well-respected expert on both Lassa fever and Ebola. At the time of his death, in late July, Khan was hailed as a national hero. He treated more than 100 patients in the outbreak before he contracted the disease himself.
MORE
In the latest sign that the outbreak of the virus, which has already killed at least 1,550 people, is spinning out of control, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that Ebola cases rose last week at the fastest pace since the epidemic began in West Africa in March. The epidemic has defied efforts by governments to control it, prompting the leading charity fighting the outbreak, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), to call for the U.N. Security Council to take charge of efforts to stop it. Including the fatalities, more than 3,000 have been infected since the virus was detected in the remote jungles of southeastern Guinea in March and quickly spread across the border to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It has also touched Nigeria, where six people have died.
Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma dismissed his Health Minister Miatta Kargbo on Friday over her handling of the epidemic, which has killed more than 400 people in the former British colony. Liberia's Information Minister Lewis Brown said that two African healthcare workers treated with the experimental ZMapp Ebola drug would be released from hospital on Saturday, after making a full recovery. Scientists on Friday also reported that ZMapp, the drug that last week cured two American aid workers who contracted the disease in Liberia, had cured all 18 lab monkeys infected with the virus in laboratory tests. Senegal's first case is a student from Guinea.
Senegalese Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck said the man turned up for treatment at a hospital in the capital Dakar on Tuesday, concealing the fact that he had had close contact with victims in his home country. "We are tracing his whole itinerary and also identifying anyone who had contact with the patient, who now that he has been diagnosed is much more cooperative and supplied all the necessary information," the minister said. A Health Ministry official, who asked not to be named, said that the 21-year-old crossed into Senegal via its southern border with Guinea and had been living in the densely populated Dakar suburb of Parcelles Assainies for weeks. He added that the man appeared to have a good chance of recovering. The man had been under surveillance by health authorities in Guinea because of his contact with Ebola victims but escaped to Senegal, Seck said.
Residents in Dakar reacted with anger and concern. "When you are sick, why do you leave your own country to export the disease to another?" asked radio host Taib Soce on RFM, a popular station owned by Senegalese music star Youssou N'dour. In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, Senegal last week banned flights to and from three of the affected countries and shut its land border with Guinea. The country, a regional hub for U.N. agencies and aid groups, has also refused to give clearance for U.N. aid flights to Ebola-hit countries in a move that humanitarian workers say is hampering their ability to respond to the epidemic.
CATASTROPHE WARNING
