(task) UN Will Miss December 1 Deadline To Contain Ebola : Science : Design & Trend

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Ebola Containment

http://www.designntrend.com/articles/27215/20141125/un-will-miss-december-1-deadline-contain-ebola.htm

UN Will Miss December 1 Deadline To Contain Ebola

(Photo : Getty Images/Steve Debenport )

The United Nations will not meet its target for containing Ebola.
The United Nations targeted the first of December as a deadline for containing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa after they sent an emergency response team in September.
UN officials said the deadline will not be met because the number of infected people in Sierra Leone continues to rise, Irish Times reported.

"Earlier decisions about the need for rapid construction of large ETU's (Ebola treatment centres) were taken in a certain context where that's what made sense. Those efforts were to a large degree successful. But in the meantime the disease has spread," Andrew Banbury, head of the UN response mission, said.
Banbury said the United Nations will not make its goal because of the increasing numbers of people with the virus in Sierra Leone, Reuters reported. The greatest concern lies around Makeni, a city in the center of the country, as well as Port Loko and Freetown. If these cities do not become eradicated of the disease, Ebola may continue to spread.

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The goal was initially set in September and UN officials hoped to have 70 percent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 percent of the dead safely buried. While there has been progress in Liberia, progress in Sierra Leone has yet to be seen.
"We are going to exceed the Dec. 1 targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground," Banbury said.
The response mission was set up to provide coordination for teams of doctors coming from other countries.
Banbury said surveillance to stop Ebola from crossing borders must improve to discontinue the spread of the virus.
The Ebola outbreak, which began December of last year, has reached eight countries and killed an estimated 5,500 people.