WHO Ebola Update: Miscounted Death Rate by 1,000
World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted to an error in counting Ebola deaths, lowering the toll by thousand.
Death toll on November 28 was 6,928, up from 5,674 deaths just two days earlier. WHO then attributed the steep rise to Liberia and said it was a reconciliation of historical numbers, and not an increase in actual deaths. On Monday however, the error was spotted and revisions made, Japan Times reported.
According to Daily Mail, the latest assessment counts 5,987 deaths, with Liberia accounting for 3,145 deaths and not 4,181 as stated in the incorrect assessment. A WHO spokesperson informed about the error but did not give any explanations. Wall Street Journal reported that the error was due to countries inadvertently including non-Ebola deaths in their count.
WHO also informed that Spain became Ebola free after the country did not report any new case of infection in the last 42 days. It also informed that Liberia and Guinea reached targets of patient isolation and safe burials and only Sierra Leone has to reach its isolation target.
While the UN healthy agency is optimist about the situation, Doctors Sans Borders which is fighting the deadly virus, on Tuesday termed international response to Ebola 'slow' and 'uneven'.
"People are still dying horrible deaths in an outbreak that has already killed thousands. We can't let our guard down and allow this to become double failure, a response that was slow to begin with and is ill-adapted in the end," said Dr. Joanne Liu the organization's international president, in a press release.
Dr. Liu lamented that the international community has left Ebola response to doctors, nurses and charity.
"It is extremely disappointing that states with biological-disaster response capacities have chosen not to utilize them. How is it that the international community has left the response to Ebola-now a transnational threat-to doctors, nurses and charity workers?"
