Ebola is the biggest challenge since AIDS

A top US health official has said the Ebola outbreak is the biggest global health challenge since the emergence of AIDS. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that in the 30 years he has been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS).

In reference to repeated calls by advocacy groups for the international community to speed up efforts to contain the virus in West Africa, Frieden said we have to work now so that this is not the next AIDS. So far, donor countries have funded less than a third of the $988 million that the United Nations has appealed for to fight Ebola and stabilise the affected countries.

The presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone appealed for help in the form of health workers and millions of additional dollars, not only to fight the haemorrhagic fever, but also to prevent severe economic fallout in affected countries. Guinean President Alpha Conde said the countries are in a very fragile situation, pointing out that two-thirds of those infected belong to the most economically active age segment of the population, those between 15 and 50. Meanwhile in Europe, the treatment of Ebola patients evacuated from West Africa continued apace. One man - a UN employee from Liberia - landed in the eastern German town of Leipzig for treatment early yesterday.

He is the third person infected with Ebola to be treated in Germany. In Spain, meanwhile, the health of a nurse suffering from Ebola - the first infection to have taken place on European soil - is in decline. The Madrid clinic where she works - which was forced to admit that improper handling of an Ebola case may have caused the infection - quarantined an additional four people, among them three doctors and one nurse. The latest infections have raised fears of the virus spreading within European borders. A spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said that the introduction of new screenings at European airports was being discussed in Brussels.

SAPA, 9 October 2014