The World Health Organisation warned west Africa’s Ebola-hit nations on Friday that the epidemic was spiralling out of control and could spread to other countries, causing “catastrophic” loss of life and severe economic disruption.
WHO chief Margaret Chan told the leaders of Guinea, Sierra leone and liberia at a regional summit the response to the epidemic had been “woefully inadequate”, revealing that the outbreak was “moving faster than our efforts to control it”.
The leaders were in the Guinean capital Conakry to organise the deployment of hundreds of extra medical personnel as part of a US $ 100 million emergency response to an epidemic which has claimed more than 700 lives.