Few days ago, i got really ecstatic at reading the news that Nigeria could successfully contain Ebola until we were hit by the knowledge of having a medical doctor in Port Harcourt die of Ebola and his wife quarantined.
Making it worse is the fact that the World Health
Organization says the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa could infect
more than 20,000 people before it is brought under control.
The UN agency said the number of cases could already be four times higher than the 3,000 currently registered. It also called on airlines to resume "vital" flights across the region, saying travel bans were threatening efforts to beat the epidemic.
So far, 1,552 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria have died.
Announcing a WHO action plan to deal with the outbreak, Bruce Aylward said "the actual number of cases may be 2-4 fold higher than that currently reported" in some areas.
The WHO assistant director-general said the possibility of 20,000 cases "is a scale that I think has not ever been anticipated in terms of an Ebola outbreak".
"That's not saying we expect 20,000... but we have got to have a system in place that we can deal with robust numbers," he added.
The WHO plan calls for $489 million (£295m) to be spent over the next nine months and requires 750 international workers and 12,000 national workers across West Africa.
Let's hope that it doesn't get to that exaggerated number before this dreaded disease is finally contained.
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