Ebola running wild, WHO warns

Health agency tells 3 African leaders of risk of catastrophe

An employee  of the Monrovia City Corporation mixes disinfectant before spraying it on the streets in a bid to prevent the spread of  the deadly Ebola virus, in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Aug. 1, 2014. U.S. health officials warned Americans not to travel to the three West African countries hit by the worst recorded Ebola outbreak in history. The travel advisory issued Thursday applies to nonessential travel to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the deadly disease has killed more than 700 people this year. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)
An employee of the Monrovia City Corporation mixes disinfectant before spraying it on the streets in a bid to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Aug. 1, 2014. U.S. health officials warned Americans not to travel to the three West African countries hit by the worst recorded Ebola outbreak in history. The travel advisory issued Thursday applies to nonessential travel to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the deadly disease has killed more than 700 people this year. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)

CONAKRY, Guinea -- An Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 700 people in West Africa is moving faster than efforts to control the disease, the head of the World Health Organization warned as presidents from the affected countries met Friday in Guinea's capital.

Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO's director-general, said the meeting in Conakry "must be a turning point" in the battle against Ebola, which is now sickening people in three African capitals for the first time in history.

"If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries," she said, as the organization formally began a $100 million response plan that includes deploying hundreds more health care workers.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders said the WHO pledge "needs to translate to immediate and effective action." While the group has deployed some 550 health workers, it said it did not have the resources to expand further.

Doctors Without Borders said its teams are overwhelmed with new Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and that the situation in Liberia is now "dire."

"Over the last weeks, there has been a significant surge in the epidemic -- the number of cases has increased dramatically in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the disease has spread to many more villages and towns," the organization said in a statement. "After a lull in new cases in Guinea, there has been a resurgence in infections and deaths in the past week."

At least 729 people have died since cases first emerged in March: 339 in Guinea, 233 in Sierra Leone, 156 in Liberia and one in Nigeria.

Two American health workers in Liberia have been infected, and an American man of Liberian descent died in Nigeria from the disease, health authorities there say.

Plans were underway to bring the two American aid workers -- Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly -- back to the U.S.

A small private jet has been dispatched to Liberia to transport the aid workers to Atlanta, where they will be treated in a specialized isolation unit at Emory University Hospital. Officials said the jet was outfitted with a special, portable tent designed for transporting patients with highly infectious diseases.

While health officials say the virus is transmitted only through direct contact with bodily fluids, many sick patients have refused to go to isolation centers and have infected family members and other caregivers.

The fatality rate has been about 60 percent, and the scenes of patients bleeding from the eyes, mouth and ears has led many relatives to keep their sick family members at home instead. Sierra Leone is now sending teams door to door in search of Ebola patients and others who have been exposed to the disease.

Chan emphasized Friday that the general public "is not at high risk of infection," but also said the Ebola virus should not be allowed to circulate widely.

"Constant mutation and adaptation are the survival mechanisms of viruses and other microbes," she said. "We must not give this virus opportunities to deliver more surprises."

Randy Schoepp, chief of diagnostics at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which is running the only lab in Liberia testing Ebola samples, said: "The virus is getting to large, dense, city areas. We're now getting samples from all over."

But he said he thinks "we're only seeing a small portion of the cases out there," partly because many drivers are afraid to transport vials of blood that may contain Ebola to the lab.

Other countries are taking precautions to prevent the spread of Ebola.

The African Union mission in Somalia canceled a planned troop rotation by Sierra Leonean forces in an effort to prevent Ebola from crossing into the Horn of Africa country, the military said.

Nigeria's minister of health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said Thursday that the government has located 10 more people who had primary contact with the man who flew to Lagos and died there because of Ebola. As of Friday, 69 people were under surveillance and two were quarantined, Chukwu said.

Meanwhile, families in the United States expect to be reunited as early as this weekend with some of the more than 300 Peace Corps volunteers evacuated from West Africa as a precaution.

According to the Peace Corps, the last time the organization evacuated volunteers because of a disease-related crisis was in 2003, when it suspended its China mission after an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Volunteers returned to that nation in 2004.

A Peace Corps spokesman said the organization is working to get the volunteers home as quickly as possible. The group's medical officers are assessing volunteers before departure as a precaution and advising them to monitor their health after they return.

Two workers who were exposed to the virus still were being monitored Friday.

"The two Peace Corps volunteers who have had contact with an individual who later died of the virus are not symptomatic and are currently isolated and under observation," said spokesman Shira Kramer. "When they receive medical clearance for return to the U.S., we will work with them to travel safely back."

Information for this article was contributed by Maria Cheng, Carla K. Johnson, Mike Stobbe, Bashir Adigun and staff members of The Associated Press and by Cammie Bellamy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 08/02/2014

Upcoming Events