Ebola:UN Say Secret Burials in Africa Thwarting Efforts
Efforts to stamp out West Africa's Ebola epidemic are being thwarted by villagers touching and washing the infectious bodies of dead victims at secret burials, and the difficulties in tracing those exposed to the virus, U.N. officials said Thursday.
The number of new cases
rose for the first time this year in the past week, coinciding with a
looming funding shortfall and the approach of the rainy season that will
hamper aid efforts from April, they warned.
Some communities in Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone believe traditional practices are needed for the
departed's spirit and the society, so it is "asking a lot of them" to
change, he said.
"The flares (in new
cases) that we're seeing are usually because there has been an unsafe
burial, probably done secretly," Nabarro said.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, the
World Health Organization's special representative on Ebola, said the
124 new cases recorded in the week to Feb. 1, up from 99 the previous
week, also reflected the virus' spread to border areas near Mali and
Senegal.
"The virus has told us
this week loud and clear I'm not going to go away the way you are
expecting me to based on these (epidemiological) curves. And all I have
to do is survive out the next couple of weeks or months until the rains
hit, and then you're going to have a very, very difficult situation," he
said.
But WHO, the U.N. agency leading the
fight against the year-old epidemic that has killed nearly 9,000
people, faces financial constraints.
"Right now, though, our
funding for those 800 people out there in the field, it ends at the end
of February. That is how precarious the situation is right now in terms
of being able to sustain this," Aylward said.
The five new cases reported in Liberia last week were all people on lists of contacts of Ebola patients, he said, noting that the success rate may prove hard to sustain. In Guinea the rate was 54 percent and in Sierra Leone 57 percent.
culled:NBCnews
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