WHO: Ebola worst emergency in modern era
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THE World Health Organization called the Ebola outbreak “the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times” on Monday but also said that economic disruptions can be curbed if people are adequately informed to prevent irrational moves to dodge infection.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, citing World Bank figures, said 90 percent of economic costs of any outbreak “come from irrational and disorganized efforts of the public to avoid infection.”
Staffers of the global health organization “are very well aware that fear of infection has spread around the world much faster than the virus,” Chan said in a statement read out to a regional health conference in the Philippine capital, Manila.
“We are seeing, right now, how this virus can disrupt economies and societies around the world,” she said, but added that adequately educating the public was a “good defense strategy” and would allow governments to prevent economic disruptions.
The Ebola epidemic has killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Philippine Health Secretary Enrique Ona said authorities will ask more than 1,700 Filipinos working in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to observe themselves for at least 21 days for symptoms in those countries first if they plan to return home.
Elsewhere, Spain said will ramp up training for health workers and emergency services. Recriminations are flying in Spain over whether hospitals were well enough prepared to deal with Ebola cases, after 44-year-old Teresa Romero last week became the first person in the current outbreak to catch the deadly virus outside Africa.
A broader training program is being developed, said healthcare academic Fernando Rodriguez Artalejo, who is part of a scientific committee advising the government.
In the United States, where a Texas health worker has contracted the disease after treating an infected patient who travelled from Liberia, the spotlight has also fallen on how medical guidelines could have been breached.
Meanwhile, many Liberian healthcare workers on the frontline of the battle against Ebola ignored calls yesterday to strike over poor pay and working conditions, and most hospitals and clinics were operating normally.
Alphonso Weah, head of medical staff at the government’s 150-bed Island Clinic in the capital Monrovia, said workers had decided to come in after appeals from the general public.
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