Doctors Without Borders has said that the Ebola epidemic has reached a stage that is unmanageable; medical centers are filling up faster than doctors can attend to patients. The World Health Organization has said that the actual numbers of dead are likely more than what is being reported.
The New York Times reports:
So far, 2,127 cases of the disease and 1,145 deaths have been reported in four nations — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — the W.H.O announced Friday. But the organization has also warned that the actual number is almost certainly higher, perhaps by a very considerable margin.
“Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak,” the group said in a statement on Thursday.
Africa’s air routes are increasingly at risk as the Ebola virus prompts local carriers to avoid the worst-affected areas, demand weakens and Korean Air Lines Co. (003490) halts services thousands of miles from the outbreak’s epicenter, signaling a broader threat to the continent’s travel links.
Airlines from Gambia, Togo and Nigeria have halted flights to Ebola-hit states, while Korean Air will end operations to Kenya on Aug. 20 after a World Health Organization official in the country, which has suffered zero Ebola cases, described it as “high risk” because of airline ties to the rest of Africa.
