GENEVA – The World Health Organization marked a grim milestone Thursday in the biggest-ever Ebola outbreak, estimating that the virus had killed more than 10,000 people, mostly in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Fifteen other Ebola deaths also occurred in Mali, Nigeria and the United States.
When Ebola was first detected in March 2014 in Guinea’s forest, officials assumed the deadly virus could quickly be stamped out, just as it had in more than two dozen previous outbreaks, mostly in central and eastern Africa. But health officials now acknowledge they were too slow to respond to this emergency, allowing Ebola to cross porous borders in a region where broken health systems were unable to stop its spread.
A huge global response – including soldiers sent by Britain, the U.S. and other nations – has slowed the deaths from Ebola dramatically, especially Liberia, but the virus appears stubbornly entrenched in parts of Guinea and Sierra Leone.
WHO declared Ebola an international health emergency in August – but critics have slammed the agency for waiting until there were nearly 1,000 deaths to do so. WHO recently announced it was forming an independent expert panel to assess its response. Ebola cases also emerged elsewhere in Africa, including Nigeria, Senegal and Mali, and small outbreaks were later identified in the U.S. and Spain.
The outbreak has had one silver lining – it has sped up the development of Ebola vaccines and treatments, something researchers have been working on for years.
WHO and its partners have already started testing two experimental shots, including a recently launched large-scale study to see if a vaccine can help protect people already exposed to the lethal virus but who haven’t yet developed the disease. Even though the vaccine may come too late to make a difference to this Ebola outbreak, it could prove invaluable later.
“If we (have) a vaccine stockpile for the future, we might be able to prevent (future outbreaks) from turning into what has happened in West Africa,” said Sebastian Funk, an infectious diseases expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
