Ebola’s toll on Sierra Leone is much greater than previously thought, with entire villages killed off by the virus. This means up to 20,000 people could have succumbed to the disease by now, a senior coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) believes.
READ MORE: Canada imposes visa ban on Ebola-hit African countries
According to Rony Zachariah, coordinator of operational research
for MSF, the Ebola impact on Sierra Leone is in fact
“under-reported,” AFP quotes.
“The situation is catastrophic. There are several villages
and communities that have been basically wiped out. In one of the
villages I went to, there were 40 inhabitants and 39 died,”
Zachariah told the agency. “Whole communities have
disappeared but many of them are not in the statistics. The
situation on the ground is actually much worse.”
The latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) put
the total number of dead at 4,951 out of 13,567 recorded cases.
But the real total could be up to 20,000 people dead, Zachariah
argues. “The WHO says there is a correction factor of 2.5, so
maybe it is 2.5 times higher and maybe that is not far from the
truth. It could be 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000.”
Zachariah also highlighted the shortage of healthcare workers in
the country.
READ MORE: Ebola hospital ship docks in Sierra Leone in UK aid effort
“You have one nurse for 10,000 people and then you lose 10, 11, 12 nurses. How is the health system going to work?” he said.
Even at this point, the pace of dealing with Ebola is slow, he added. “We might get a vaccine and a treatment...but even now we need to go much faster because the clock is ticking...We want action now.”
Meanwhile, the latest cases of Ebola in Spain and the US have
sparked fears of an even bigger outbreak, prompting Canada to
step up its border security so as to limit the risk of infection
spreading into the country.
The federal government announced on Friday it is suspending the
processing of visa applications for residents and nationals who
have been in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in the last three
months. The same goes for permanent residence applications.
READ MORE: ISIS eyes using Ebola as bio weapon – Spain
The Spanish government has expressed grave concern over the
threat of terrorists using Ebola as a biological weapon against
the West.
Spain’s state secretary for security, Francisco Martinez,
addressed the parliament, discussing the possibility of
extremists connected to the Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS)
using Ebola as a weapon against the West.
There are “many examples” of online terrorist chat logs
discussing the use of biological warfare against the West,
Spain’s RTVE public broadcasting corporation reported.