AFP/Reuters/Freetown
A Cuban doctor infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone became the latest of nearly 600 health workers to have contracted the virus, amid fresh warnings that the fight against the disease is far from over.
The deadliest outbreak of Ebola ever has now killed 5,420 people and infected 15,145, according to new World Health Organisation (WHO) figures on Wednesday, with Sierra Leone seeing the steepest increase in new cases.
Cuba has played a large role in intensifying global efforts to fight the outbreak in the three worst-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, sending around 250 nurses and doctors to the region with another 450 to come.
Felix Baez Sarria, one of about 165 Cuban medics in Sierra Leone, left the country on Thursday afternoon in an aircraft bound for Switzerland, a Reuters witness said.
Baez, a father of two children, was due to arrive in Geneva for medical treatment later.
It was not immediately clear how he came to catch the haemorrhagic fever which is spread via bodily fluids such as blood, sweat and vomit.
In a message to his father, Sarria’s son Alejandro Baez said: “Be strong Dad, everything’s going to be fine. All Cuba’s pulling for you,” according to the pro-government news website Cubasi.
In its latest update, the WHO said Ebola transmission “remains intense and widespread” in Sierra Leone, with 533 new confirmed cases reported in the week to November 16.
The outbreaks in Guinea and Liberia now appear driven by intense transmission only in several key districts and no longer nationwide, the body said.
Medical professionals have been particularly affected by the worst Ebola outbreak on record. Out of the 584 healthcare workers known to have contracted the virus, 329 have died.
U2 frontman Bono and Oscar-winning actors Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman led an appeal on Wednesday for the world to step up its fight against Ebola, releasing a video in deliberate silence to decry early inaction.
The three countries at the epicentre of the outbreak are among the world’s poorest, with sketchy healthcare and infrastructure facilities that were ravaged by years of inter-linked civil conflicts.
The lack of toilets in the region was highlighted by the United Nations as a possible cause of the spread of the highly contagious haemorrhagic disease.
Half the population of Liberia, the country worst hit by the epidemic, have no access to toilets, while in Sierra Leone nearly one-third of people live without latrines, a new United Nations report said.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said the fight against Ebola was going well, citing a big drop in the number of new infections during a tour of an Ebola Treatment Unit or ETU.
“I feel very good. The people are working well – doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers – they are all very vigilant and very efficient; more importantly, most of the ETUs don’t have patients,” she added.
Her office said the objective was to have “zero new cases by Christmas”.
The World Bank meanwhile said nearly half the workforce in Liberia was no longer working since the onset of the epidemic, with the self-employed working in markets particularly badly hit.
In Mali, which has recorded five Ebola deaths, 413 people were being tracked for signs of the disease and only one – a doctor at a hospital where a Guinean imam had died of the disease – has tested positive, the government said.
The fight against Ebola is far from being won despite the encouraging news from Liberia, world leaders have warned.
“We are nowhere near out of the woods yet in West Africa,” US President Barack Obama said.
General view of the Geneva University Hospital in Geneva. Cuban doctor Felix Baez Sarriawas flown to Switzerland for treatment in a Geneva hospital, S
