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              Britain Urges 'Decisive Action' at Ebola Conference

   by VOA News

   Britain made a plea for international help to deal with the world's
   worst Ebola outbreak at the start of a conference in London on
   Thursday, with one charity warning that five people are being infected
   with the virus every hour in Sierra Leone.

   British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond called for "decisive action"
   to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, urging countries to
   increase financial aid as well as provide other vital help including
   medical expertise, transport and supplies.

   Hammond told the "Defeating Ebola" conference Thursday in London that
   such action could save hundreds of thousands of lives and prevent the
   crisis from getting further out of control.

   Ebola has killed at least 3,338 in West Africa - mainly in Sierra
   Leone, Guinea and Liberia - out of 7,178 cases as of September 28, the
   World Health Organization (WHO) said, and cases have been recorded
   elsewhere, including in the United States.

   'Simply wrong'

   Even with the rise in cases reported by WHO, Liberia's President Ellen
   Johnson Sirleaf said the Ebola crisis is stabilizing in her country and
   new data will soon prove that warnings from U.S. and U.N. experts of
   tens of thousands of cases were "simply wrong."

   The comments, made to France 24's English news channel late on
   Wednesday, follow forecasts from the WHO that 20,000 people could be
   infected with Ebola by early November.

   The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has warned of hundreds of
   thousands of cases if swift action is not taken.

   "We are beginning to see a stabilization - even in Monrovia, which has
   been hit the hardest," Johnson Sirleaf said, referring to Liberia's
   capital city.

   Liberia has recorded the most deaths - nearly 2,000 - and aid agencies
   say they still need hundreds of beds for Ebola patients in the capital.

   The lack of beds means Ebola patients are being turned away and sent
   back to their communities, further spreading the infection.

   However, Sirleaf rejected the negative warnings.

   "I am waiting for the next projections and I hope they will admit that
   they've just been simply wrong, that all of our countries are getting
   this thing under control," she said.

   Under-reporting suspected

   Although WHO said the total number of new cases had fallen for a second
   week, it warned of under-reporting and said there were few signs of the
   epidemic being brought under control.

   "Transmission remains persistent and widespread in Guinea, Liberia and
   Sierra Leone, with strong evidence of increasing case incidence in
   several districts," the WHO said.

   Britain and Sierra Leone arranged the event to spotlight the scale of
   the outbreak and ask for international support ahead of a donor
   conference planned for later this month.

   Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma, due to attend Thursday's
   conference, had to cancel because of technical problems with his plane.

   Hammond said Britain has begun work on a 92-bed treatment center in
   Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, as part of its pledge to add 700 new
   beds in the country.

   Aid group Save the Children highlighted the lack of treatment capacity
   in Sierra Leone, saying treatment facilities there currently offer only
   327 beds.

   The latest WHO figures report 788 new cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone in
   the past three weeks.

   Save the Children warned that even with the Britain's planned aid, more
   capacity will be needed to avoid having infected people staying at home
   and risking passing the virus on to their families.

   US watching Ebola patient's contacts

   Meanwhile, health officials in the United States are watching as many
   as 18 people, including five children, who came into contact with the
   first patient in the country to be diagnosed with Ebola.

   The man from Liberia is in isolation at a Dallas hospital, where he was
   listed as serious but stable on Wednesday.

   He arrived in the United States on September 20, and five days later
   went to the hospital with a low-grade fever and abdominal pain.

   A hospital official said the man told an emergency room nurse that he
   had come from Liberia, but that the information was not shared with all
   of his medical team.

   The man from Liberia was sent home with antibiotics but returned two
   days later.

   Ebola causes uncontrollable bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. It is
   spread by direct contact with the body fluids of infected patients.

   There is no specific treatment, but an American doctor diagnosed with
   the virus was found to be Ebola-free after taking an experimental drug
   in August.

   Some material for this report came from Reuters.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/british-foreign-secretary-urges-decisive-action-at-ebola-conference/2469827.html