Sierra Leone Situation worsens: Estimated Five New Cases per Hour

SIERRA LEONE SITUATION    TWO ARTICLES  (Scroll down)

THE GUARDIAN             OCT. 2, 2014

Ebola is spreading at the rate of five new cases an hour in Sierra Leone, according to figures released as world leaders and experts on disease control gathered in London to discuss the outbreak.

The figures from Save the Children showed there were 765 new cases last week in the west African country alone, but only 327 hospital beds to treat infected patients. ...The rate of spread of the deadly virus is projected to double to 10 people an hour in the country before the end of October, Save the Children said.

The UN said the spread of the disease in neighbouring Liberia was just as alarming and called for a massive international response to prevent the outbreak wreaking havoc in west Africa and beyond. Speaking from Liberia, Anthony Banbury, the head of a new UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, said: “It is fairly similar in Liberia. The disease is spreading very rapidly – cases doubling every 20 days.”

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/02/ebola-infecting-five-every-hour-sierra-leone

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NEW YORK TIMES

by Adam Nossiter    Oct. 1, 2014

MAKENI, Sierra Leone-

A 4 year old girl, forground, and another child thought to have Ebola lay amid bodily fluids at a hospital in Makeni, Sierre Leone  --Samuek Aranda for the NY Times

... The consequences in places like Makeni, one of Sierra Leone’s largest cities, have been devastating.

“The whole country has been hit by something for which it was not ready,” said Dr. Amara Jambai, director of prevention and control at Sierra Leone’s health ministry.

Bombali, the district that includes this city, went from one confirmed case on Aug. 15 to more than 190 this weekend, with dozens more suspected. In a sign of how quickly the disease has spread, at least six dozen new cases have been confirmed in the district in the past few days alone, health officials said. The government put this district, 120 miles northeast of the capital, Freetown, under quarantine late last week, making official what was already established on the ground. Ebola patients are dying under trees at holding centers or in foul-smelling hospital wards surrounded by pools of infectious waste, cared for as best they can by lightly trained and minimally protected nurses, some wearing merely bluejeans.

“There’s no training for the staff here,” said Dr. Mohammed Bah, the director of the government hospital here. “The training is just PowerPoint. It is very difficult to manage Ebola here.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html