With surge in Liberia, Ebola cases in West Africa rise to 4,200

A surge in Ebola infections in Liberia is driving a spiralling outbreak in West Africa that is increasingly putting health workers at risk as they struggle to treat an overwhelming number of patients. A higher proportion of health workers has been infected in this outbreak than in any previous one. The latest infection was of a doctor with the World Health Organisation treating patients in Sierra Leone. The organisation gave no details, but an American who became infected while working in West Africa landed in the U.S. Tuesday to get treatment at Emory University Hospital. This is the second WHO staffer to be infected in Sierra Leone, and the UN health agency said Tuesday that after an investigation of the first case, staffers battling Ebola there now have better working conditions—including larger, more private quarters.

The fact that people that are highly trained are getting infected is because the number of cases is bigger than the bed capacity … When you have too many patients, you have too much to do, you get tired and when you’re exhausted, you make mistakes.

Jorge Castilla, epidemiologist, European Union’s Department for Humanitarian Aid

The outbreak sweeping West Africa is thought to have killed more than 2,200 people, and public health experts agree that it is out of control. More than 4,200 people are believed to have been sickened in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. The disease is spreading particularly quickly in Liberia, where WHO figures published Tuesday showed that more than 500 new cases were recorded in a week. The organisation warned Monday that it expects thousands of new cases in the country in the coming weeks. Sierra Leone said it is also expecting to uncover potentially hundreds of new cases during a three-day nationwide lockdown later this month. While people are confined to their homes, thousands of volunteers will go house to house to search for those infected, Sidie Yahya Tunis, a Health Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.