As Liberia’s chief medical officer placed herself under quarantine on Saturday, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that the Ebola death toll in West Africa had surpassed 3,000—though it warned for the second time in as many months that the statistics “vastly underestimate” the true scale of the epidemic.
Bernice Dahn, a deputy health minister who has represented Liberia at several regional conferences, voluntarily placed herself into a 21-day incubation period after her assistant died of the disease. Dahn told the Associated Press that she did not have any Ebola symptoms but wanted to ensure that she was not infected.
According to the WHO, the 21-day quarantine is the maximum period for Ebola, which has spread rapidly throughout West Africa in recent months and hit Liberia particularly hard.
The epidemic has been compounded by a shortage of health workers and facilities and an insufficient response from the international community. At least 200 health workers have died in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, three of the countries where the disease has hit particularly hard. Sierra Leone declared their own crisis a “state of emergency.” Their government imposed a three-day lockdown on residents earlier this month and last week quarantined over one million residents in the country’s eastern region.
Additional WHO figures released Friday say 150 people died in Liberia in just two days.
Click Here: NRL Telstra Premiership
“The Ebola epidemic ravaging parts of West Africa is the most severe acute public health emergency seen in modern times,” WHO said in a statement. “Never before in recorded history has a biosafety level four pathogen infected so many people so quickly, over such a broad geographical area, for so long.”
“The current situation is so dire that, in several areas that include capital cities, many of these common diseases and health conditions are barely being managed at all,” WHO said.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT