Dear Colleagues,
New dire predictions, released this week, have indicated that more than 20,000 people could be infected with Ebola by the beginning of November if cases continue to rise at the present rate. The new projections serve as a warning of the enormous cost for delay in getting aid to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Officials are thus working to increase facilities and other settings in which Ebola patients can minimize their contact with uninfected people. If such facilities can be implemented quickly and sustained, the course of the outbreak can be changed.
The United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council have approved resolutions creating the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) to contain the ongoing outbreak, which has infected 6,263 people and killed 2,917. This is the first time that the UN has created a mission for a public health emergency. The Mission will bring together resources of the UN agencies and will have its headquarters in Accra. Initial UNMEER teams have arrived in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to set up operations.
The situation in Liberia is currently the most worrying. Last week, 113 new cases were reported over a single 24-hour period. The healthcare system is completely overwhelmed and food and fuel shortages are pervasive. Two new Ebola treatment units have been opened in the country, but the existing capacity is distressingly short. In Guinea, there continues to be resistance to social mobilization efforts in some communities and violence against health workers has impacted control efforts. A three-day nationwide lockdown has ended in Sierra Leone during which volunteers launched a house-to-house Ebola awareness campaign that reached 75% of the 1.5 million households across the country. More than 150 new cases and 200 deaths were uncovered during the campaign.
No new cases have been reported in Nigeria and Senegal. Contact tracing and follow-up is still ongoing in Nigeria with 64 individuals still under surveillance. In Senegal, all contacts have now completed the 21-day monitoring period, with no further cases of Ebola reported. A 42-day follow-up period with no new cases must elapse before the outbreak can be considered to have ended in Senegal.
We are working on a matching donation program to an organization working in the affected countries and will send details on how staff can contribute to it early next week.
Please email David Rolph, our director of Global Security, david_rolph@abtassoc.com and cc Sarah Dedic, sarah_dedic@abtassoc.com with any questions you have about the status of the outbreak.
Best,
Jay
Jay L. Knott | Executive Vice President, Chief Business Officer | Abt Associates
O: 301-347-5896| F: 301-828-9739 | www.abtassociates.com
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