WASHINGTON, D.C. — After killing more than 10,000 people in three West African nations over the last year, Ebola is now confirmed in fewer than 40 patients. But the deadly outbreak could still flare up, World Health Organization officials warned on Thursday.
"This is a vicious, dangerous virus and it is not going easily or quietly into that good night," said WHO's Bruce Aylward, speaking at a United Nations Foundation briefing on the status of the disease, which, beginning last year, ravaged Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
The remaining cases are confined to coastal districts of Guinea, which has 28 cases, and Sierra Leone, with 9, but, Aylward said, "it is not over."
Despite "stunning" progress in limiting the Ebola outbreak, which WHO once estimated would kill more than 20,000 people, with other estimates still higher, Aylward pointed to Guinea's increase of seven cases from last week to show that people are still catching the disease. They live in poor and marginalized coastal districts near Forecariah, where rioters on occasion attacked priests, epidemiologists, and Red Cross workers out of Ebola fears, making victims there the most difficult cases.
"It's going to be tough to get to zero [cases]," David Nabarro, U.N. Special Envoy on Ebola, said at the briefing, held in advance of an International Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting on Friday.
At the Friday meeting, long-term recovery plan proposals will be presented by the presidents of the three Ebola-scarred nations, which saw the collapse of schools, commerce, and hospitals during the outbreak. "It was a scene right out of Dante's Inferno," Nabarro said. "People were dying in the streets. People were dying outside treatment centers."
A $171 million shortfall in Ebola response funds, according to WHO estimates, out of an needed $350 million, further threatens the chances of completely snuffing out the outbreak and preventing a resurgence, noted WHO Director General Margaret Chan at the briefing. "Success is not assured," said Aylward, who had just returned from a tour of the still-afflicted districts. "We will run out of financing soon to get this finished."
Smarter medical responses to future large-scale outbreaks to prevent the next Ebola outbreak mean that the world needs to strengthen treatment and public health services now in regions prone to epidemics, said Chan.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it is collaborating with the African Union Commission to open the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention later this year.
"In a global world, we can see that disease in one country is a threat to all countries," Chan said.