Ebola is spreading at the rate of five new cases every hour in Sierra Leone according to new figures released as world leaders and experts on disease control gathered in London for an international conference on 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. It warned that the “terrifying rate” of the spread of the disease was outstripping medical supplies and threatened a breakdown of Sierra Leone’s already fragile health system.
The rate of spread of the deadly virus is projected to double to 10 people every hour in the country before the end of October, Save the Children pointed out.
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.”
Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Banbury said: “The disease has reached every county of Liberia. It is clear that the international community has to have a rapid and very strong response to get this disease under control before it wreaks much more massive havoc in these countries and possibly other ones.”
The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola outside Africa told medical staff in the US that he had recently travelled to Liberia.
Banbury added: “We now need a very massive international response, that combines health interventions, big logistics as well as mass community mobilisation – getting information out to very remote villages, explaining to them how to protect themselves against the disease and what to do if someone falls sick.”
Save the Children’s chief executive, Justin Forsyth, said: “The scale of the Ebola epidemic is devastating and growing every day, with five people infected every hour in Sierra Leone last week. We need a coordinated international response that ensures treatment centres are built and staffed immediately.
“This is not only an immediate humanitarian threat, but risks completely undoing the hard work which has been done to build up fragile health systems in Sierra Leone and Liberia after the devastating wars of the past few decades. ”
The warnings come as Britain is hosting a conference to discuss the international response to the outbreak. The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, and development secretary, Justine Greening, and the president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, are among those due to take part in the event at Lancaster House.
Greening said Britain was working urgently with Sierra Leone to “scale up” the international response to the disease.
But MPs from the Commons international development committee suggested that cuts in international aid to Sierra Leone and Liberia and a failure to properly supervise spending might have contributed to the spread of the disease.
In a scathing report, the committee said the crisis “demonstrates the dangers of ignoring the least developed countries in the world” and risks wiping out the benefit of £20m of previous UK-funded work.