EBOLA: Another UN Worker Tests Positive To EBOLA

         

      The United Nations (UN) Wednesday confirmed that another staff of the international organisation has tested positive for the deadly Ebola Virus Disease.
Briefing UN Correspondents in New York, spokesperson of the UN Secretary-General, Stephane DuJarric, said this brings to two the member of staff to succumb to the disease. The patient was said to have worked for UN Mission in Liberia, UNMIL where he got infected.

“This is the second case of Ebola in the mission. An earlier probable case resulted in the death of a staff member on September 25.
“The Mission has, therefore, taken all the necessary measures to prevent possible further transmission within or outside the mission.

“In line with World Health Organisation (WHO) protocols, the UNMIL Medical team has conducted immediate and robust contact tracing to ensure that all the people that came in contact with staff members if they were symptomatic are assessed and such staff quarantined.

“All UNMIL staff considered at risk have been isolated and ambulances and other locations decontaminated,” said DuJarric.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said in a report that the spread of Ebola disease has not been brought under control in some parts of the West African countries being ravaged by the virus as reported.
According to WHO, this is moreso that the virus which has killed 3,879 people is now threatening more West African nations poorly equipped to deal with the disease.
A total of 8,033 people have been infected with the disease as at October 5, and 3,879 of those infected had died, the UN’s health agency said on Wednesday.
It also said the two worst-hit nations, Liberia and Sierra Leone, had less than a quarter of the beds needed.

“The situation in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone continues to deteriorate, with widespread and persistent transmission of Ebola,” the organisation said, adding “there is no evidence that the EVD epidemic in West Africa is being brought under control.”
The UN agency said a reported fall in the number of new cases in Liberia was “unlikely to be genuine” and rather reflected how responders were being overwhelmed by data. Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, had said on Tuesday that international aid to battle the Ebola epidemic was arriving too slowly in her country.

“We just need to see a little bit faster action, that’s all. But certainly, in terms of resources both human and financial as well as material, I think the response is well appreciated and is very good. We would like to speed it up,” Sirleaf told the Reuters news agency.

Meanwhile, burial workers ended a one- day strike in Sierra Leone over unpaid wages, which left contagious corpses of Ebola victims at homes and on the streets of the capital, Freetown.
Also in Liberia, health workers have threatened to strike if their demands of a $700-a-month salary and safety equipment were not met by the end of the week.

 Culled from NAN