Ebola outbreak: World Health Organisation drafts strategy to combat disease as death toll rises to 1,427

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it is finalising a plan to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, with details to be released early next week.

The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has risen to 1,427, according to the latest figures released by the WHO.

Liberia remains the worst-affected country with 624 deaths. Guinea has seen 406 people die while the disease has killed 392 in Sierra Leone and five in Nigeria.

The UN agency says it has drawn up a draft strategy to combat the disease over the next six to nine months.

David Nabarro, senior United Nations system coordinator for Ebola, who was travelling with the WHO's Dr Keiji Fukuda in Liberia, said the strategy would involve ramping up the number of health workers fighting the disease.

"It means more doctors, Liberian doctors, more nurses, Liberian nurses, and more equipment," he said.

"But it also means, of course, more international staff."

The announcement comes after aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which has urged the WHO to do more, said that the speed of the crisis was outstripping the ability of authorities to cope.

The affected West African countries were already struggling with few doctors and fragile healthcare systems before the Ebola outbreak was first identified in March.

Health workers have been among the hardest hit by the disease.

The head of MSF, Joanne Liu, told Reuters that the fight against Ebola was being undermined by a lack of international leadership and emergency management skills.

In a sign of spreading regional alarm, Senegal, West Africa's humanitarian hub, said it had blocked a UN aid plane from landing and was banning all further flights to and from countries affected by Ebola.

The WHO has repeatedly said it does not recommend travel or trade restrictions for countries affected by Ebola, saying such measures could heighten food and supply shortages.

Gabon has also announced its suspension of air and sea links to the four affected countries, following the lead of a number of regional nations who have defied WHO advice in an attempt to isolate themselves from the disease.

Families hiding infected loved ones

The WHO said the scale of the outbreak has been underestimated and that many cases have probably gone unreported, especially in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Families hiding infected loved ones and the existence of "shadow zones" where medics cannot go mean the Ebola epidemic is even bigger than thought, the agency said.

The WHO said it is now working with the MSF and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to produce "more realistic estimates".

The stigma surrounding Ebola poses a serious obstacle to efforts to contain the virus, which causes regular outbreaks in the forests of Central Africa but is striking for the first time in the continent's western nations and their heavily populated capitals.

"As Ebola has no cure, some believe infected loved ones will be more comfortable dying at home," the WHO said in a statement detailing why the outbreak had been underestimated.

"Others deny that a patient has Ebola and believe that care in an isolation ward - viewed as an incubator of the disease - will lead to infection and certain death."

In other cases health centres are being suddenly overwhelmed with patients, suggesting there is an invisible caseload of patients not on the radar of official surveillance systems.

US experts have played down hopes of a cure for Ebola after two American health workers were sent home from hospital after being cleared of the virus.

source: http://www.abc.net.au