Ebola deaths near 4,500 as virus spreads in West Africa

A total of 4,493 people have died from the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record, and the situation in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is deteriorating, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. WHO said a total of 8,997 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola had been reported in seven countries as of Oct. 12, with the vast majority of these in the three West African nations. In Spain and the United States, a handful of healthcare workers are ill, while Senegal and Nigeria appear to have prevented further spread of the disease, the WHO said. In Guinea 843 people have died of the disease and an increase in new cases was driven by a spike in infection in the coastal capital Conakry and the nearby district of Coyah. In Sierra Leone, transmission of the disease was rampant with 425 new cases between Oct. 6 and Oct. 12, WHO said, with the capital Freetown and the neighbouring western districts of Bombali and Port Loko the hardest hit.

It is clear…that the situation in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is deteriorating, with widespread and persistent transmission of [Ebola].

WHO statement

Meanwhile, airports in Britain, Canada and the United States have introduced stepped-up screening of travelers arriving from West Africa, where the disease has ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. But the European Union stopped short of recommending full continent-wide screening, suggesting instead that member states give medical information at airports to travelers from Ebola-hit countries. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an alert for all passengers who traveled on an Oct.13 flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Texas, seeking to interview 132 people who flew on a plane with an Ebola-infected health care worker who had not yet become symptomatic. Ebola is only transmitted by close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who is showing symptoms such as fever, diarrhea or vomiting.

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