(Newswire.net — October 3, 2014) — On behalf of 34 NGOs battling Ebola in West Africa, IRC warned at an international summit convened in London that the number of Ebola infected is doubling roughly every three weeks.
‘Save the Children’ NGO said that 765 new cases were reported in the country last week but there were only 327 beds available “with five people infected every hour.”
More than 3,000 people have died from Ebola so-far in West Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced earlier this week. 6,500 cases have been officially recorded, but the real number is expected to be far higher, as many victims are dying unreported, said WHO.
“The epidemic scares me more than either the early years of the HIV virus and SARS.” said Dr. David Nabarro, leading the United Nation’s Ebola response, at the ‘Defeating Ebola’ conference on Thursday.
The world has a small “window of opportunity” left to stop the disease spreading further, said Sanjayan Srikanthan from the IRC, speaking on behalf of aid organizations and NGOs such as Christian Aid and Oxfam.
“Every day we delay in disbursing resources to affected countries, the more impossible it becomes to contain the disease. The international community has a window of opportunity over the next four weeks to stop the crisis from spreading completely out of control. To do so we must break transmission rates and halt the exponential increase in cases,” he says in a statement prepared for the summit.
A WHO spokesman said that the number of new cases increasing sharply in several districts, and transmission is still widespread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone where the situation is “the most critical.”
“We need a coordinated international response that ensures treatment centers are built and staffed immediately,” said Justin Forsyth, the Save the Children’s chief executive, as quoted by British media.
The IRC said that only a quarter of the amount needed has been committed so far and urged international donors to increase donations and hand them over to the UN appeal within two weeks.
Second is medical personnel and equipment. Many health centers lack the resources to diagnose, isolate and treat patients with Ebola, and protect health workers.
More military and civilian support is needed as Aid agencies don’t have enough staff to deal with the crisis.
It is estimated that $1 billion is needed to adequately respond to the Ebola crisis, just in three of the countries with confirmed cases, though the hidden indirect costs of Ebola are far greater than that.