Published: 6:08AM Wednesday September 10, 2014 Source: AP
A surge in Ebola infections in Liberia is driving a spiralling outbreak in West Africa that is increasingly putting health workers at risk as they struggle to treat an overwhelming number of patients.
A higher proportion of health workers has been infected in this outbreak than in any previous one. The latest infection was of a doctor with the World Health Organization treating patients in Sierra Leone. The organisation gave no details, but an American who became infected while working in West Africa landed in the US Tuesday to get treatment at Emory University Hospital.
This is the second WHO staffer to be infected in Sierra Leone, and the UN health agency said that after an investigation of the first case, staffers battling Ebola there now have better working conditions - including larger, more private quarters.
The outbreak sweeping West Africa is thought to have killed more than 2,200 people, and public health experts agree that it is out of control. More than 4,200 people have believed to have been sickened in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.
The disease is spreading particularly quickly in Liberia, where WHO figures published Tuesday showed that more than 500 new cases were recorded in a week.
The organisation has warned that it expects thousands of new cases in the country in the coming weeks. Each time a new treatment centre is opened there, it said, it becomes immediately overwhelmed, 'pointing to a large but previously invisible caseload.'
Health workers in Liberia have also paid a heavy toll; 160 have been sickened in that country, and 80 have died, according to Karin Landgren, the UN envoy to the country. Health workers are at particular risk because of their close contact with the sick since Ebola is only spread by contact with bodily fluids of those who have symptoms.
A shortage of doctors and nurses to care for these patients is being exacerbated by the sheer number of health workers becoming infected. But that shortage may also be the reason they are getting infected, experts say.
'The fact that people that are highly trained are getting infected is because the number of cases is bigger than the bed capacity,' said Jorge Castilla, an epidemiologist with the European Union's Department for Humanitarian Aid. 'When you have too many patients, you have too much to do, you get tired and when you're exhausted, you make mistakes.'
Staffing shortages have been exacerbated by strikes, and nurses and doctors have also fled their workplaces simply out of fear. Staff at a hospital in the Liberian capital went on strike this week; a local pastor called the place a 'slaughterhouse' because it is not equipped to handle treatment for Ebola.
Castilla said doctors face the impossible choice between turning away patients they don't have room for - knowing that they will continue to spread the disease - and taking those patients in, thus putting their own health at risk.
