Two
children sit outside a hospital in Kenema, the third largest city in
Sierra Leone, digging into a bowl of food and sharing plastic bags of
clean water.
They
have both been orphaned during the Ebola outbreak that has gripped West
Africa and put the rest of the planet in a state of constant vigilance
and fear.
The
death toll in the outbreak is now at 4,546, around half of the known
cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the latest
figures from the UN World Health Organization.
Tragedy: Two young orphans whose parents have died of Ebola sharing a meal in Kenema, Sierra Leone
Now,
the WHO is scaling up efforts to reach 600,000 people that have been
affected by the health crisis in the area, that has seen hundreds of
children orphaned and many families left without a breadwinner.
The
latest death toll was released as the news came that Nigeria has been
declared free from Ebola after passing the six week mark with no new
cases.
'This
is a spectacular success story,' Rui Gama Vaz from the WHO told a news
conference in the capital Abuja, where officials broke into applause
when he announced that Nigeria had shaken off the disease.
'It
shows that Ebola can be contained, but we must be clear that we have
only won a battle, the war will only end when West Africa is also
declared free of Ebola.'
This
year's outbreak of the highly infectious haemorrhagic fever thought to
have originated in forest bats is the worst on record.
Left behind: Children from Sierra Leone, where hundreds have died from Ebola, sitting in front of the hospital
Aftermath: Sierra Leone health workers
bury an Ebola victim near Kenema Hospital in Sierra Leone as Nigeria
has been declared Ebola free after six weeks of no new cases
Victim: Ebola has claimed the lives of
over 4,500 people across West Africa with Sierra Leone, Guinea and
Liberia the worst affected
It
was imported to Nigeria when Liberian-American diplomat Patrick Sawyer
collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20.
Airport
staff were unprepared and the government had not set up any hospital
isolation unit, so he was able to infect several people, including
health workers in the hospital where he was taken, some of whom had to
restrain him to keep him there.
Lagos,
the commercial hub of Africa's most populous nation, largest economy
and leading energy producer, would have been an ideal springboard for
Ebola to spread across the country.
'Nigeria
was not really prepared for the outbreak, but the swift response from
the federal government, state governments (and) international
organisations was essential,' said Samuel Matoka, Ebola operations
manager in Nigeria for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies (IFRC).
'If
a country like Nigeria, hampered by serious security problems, can do
this ... any country in the world experiencing an imported case can hold
onward transmission to just a handful of cases,' WHO Director Margaret
Chan said in a statement.
For
the three impoverished countries at the epicentre of the crisis,
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, it is a different matter. According to
consultancy DaMina Advisors, Nigeria has one doctor per 2,879 people
compared with one per 86,275 in Liberia.
Gripping a nation: Bystanders look at a
health worker in protective clothing after he and his colleagues
removed the body of a woman suspected of having died after contracting
the Ebola virus in Liberia
Health workers carry the woman's body to a nearby burial site in Bomi county, on the outskirts of Monrovia
Yesterday,
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said Ebola has killed more
than 2,000 people in her country and has brought it to 'a standstill',
noting that Liberia and two other badly hit countries were already
weakened by years of war.
Appealing
for more international help, Sirleaf described the devastating effects
of Ebola in a 'Letter to the World' that was broadcast Sunday by the
BBC.
'Across
West Africa, a generation of young people risk being lost to an
economic catastrophe as harvests are missed, markets are shut and
borders are closed,' the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said.
'The
virus has been able to spread so rapidly because of the insufficient
strength of the emergency, medical and military services that remain
under-resourced.'
'There
is no coincidence Ebola has taken hold in three fragile states -
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - all battling to overcome the effects
of interconnected wars,' she said adding that Liberia once had 3,000
medical doctors but by the end of its civil war in 2003, the country had
just 36.
