Officials Sound Alarm About Potential Ebola Crisis in Mali
Leaders of the United Nations and the World Health Organization expressed new alarm on Friday about Ebola’s tenacity in Africa and in particular its potential to ravage a fourth country, Mali, where they said hundreds of people had been exposed to an infected cleric who died last month.
At a webcast news conference from the World Bank offices in Washington, the United Nations’ secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the W.H.O.'s director general, Dr. Margaret Chan, also appeared to reset their schedules for containing the Ebola virus, which has sickened at least 15,351 people and killed 5,459, according to a W.H.O. update posted earlier Friday.
Instead of restating their goal of safely burying 70 percent of the dead and treating 70 percent of the sick by Dec. 1, Mr. Ban said he hoped that the outbreak could be contained by the middle of next year.
While the effort to halt the virus has made some progress, Mr. Ban said, “The international response is outpaced by this Ebola spread.”
Warning against any complacency, Dr. Chan added, “We must not forget: Ebola is a formidable enemy.”
Most of the casualties are in the three most afflicted countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
But the focus of the message of Mr. Ban and Dr. Chan was their concern about Mali, a vast country where the government does not have full control and where a United Nations peacekeeping force is deployed. At least six people in Mali have died of Ebola.
A successful effort to halt Ebola infections in Mali last month, caused by an infected 2-year-old from Guinea, has now been overshadowed by a second and far more serious source of infection, from an imam from Guinea. He had been misdiagnosed with a kidney problem after traveling to Bamako, the capital, to seek treatment.
Dr. Chan said nearly 500 people in Mali and Guinea had come into contact with the imam, whose body had been returned home and been given a ritual Muslim funeral.
Mr. Ban said that a team led by Dr. Chan was headed to Mali later Friday and that a new support center would be established there.
Dr. Chan was blunt about the potential for a worsening in Mali.
“We are scaling up our action,” she told reporters. “We have to really move with speed and scale and a no-regret policy. We must smother this little fire, this little smoke, before it gets out of control.”
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Source:
New York Times
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