Ebola deaths exceed 4,000, WHO says, as epidemic fears take hold worldwide

More than 4,000 people have died in the Ebola epidemic that broke out in west Africa at the start of the year, according to the latest figures released by the World Health Organization on Friday. The WHO said that as of October 8, 4,033 people have died from Ebola out of a total of 8,399 registered cases in seven countries. The seven affected countries are split into two groups by WHO. The first includes Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — by far the worst-affected countries. The second includes Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States, which have seen a small number of highly isolated cases.

We have to work now so that it is not the world’s next AIDS.

Tom Frieden, director, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Liberia is the worst-hit of all, with 4,076 cases and 2,316 deaths, followed by Sierra Leone with 2,950 cases and 930 deaths. Guinea, where the epidemic originated in December, has seen 1,350 cases and 778 deaths. From Australia to Zimbabwe, and Macedonia to Spain people who showed signs of fever or had recent contact with Ebola victims, were whisked into isolation units or ordered to stay in their homes. False reports of infections forced Spanish police to call for calm, while in France some public buildings outside Paris were briefly closed after a scare. With authorities warning that hoaxes could trigger panic, a man was taken off a US flight by a bio-hazards team after he sneezed and reportedly said, “I have Ebola. You are all screwed.”

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