Geneva, Switzerland — The death toll from Ebola in the three worst-affected countries in West Africa has risen to 7,373 among 19,031 known cases, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.
The latest data, posted overnight on the WHO website, reflected nearly 500 new deaths from the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since Dec. 17.
There were 8,759 in Sierra Leone with 2,477 deaths; 7,819 in Liberia with 3,346 deaths.
Sierra Leone’s government this week launched a major operation to contain the epidemic in West Africa’s worst-hit country.
President Ernest Bai Koroma said on national television that travel between all parts of the country had been restricted as part of “Operation Western Area Surge,” and public gatherings would be strictly controlled in the run-up to Christmas.
Sierra Leone’s leading doctor, Victor Willoughby died of Ebola on Thursday, hours after the arrival in the country of an experimental drug that could have been used to treat him, the government’s chief medical officer said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday praised health care workers fighting the Ebola virus as he paid his first visit to Lieberia and Sierra Leone following the outbreak.
Ban on Saturday urged countries affected by the Ebola virus to avoid discriminating against healthcare workers fighting to end the disease.
“There should be no discrimination for those who have been working or helping with Ebola. Those people are giving all of themselves,” Ban said.
His comments came after a meeting in Conakry where one nurse, Rebecca Johnson, a Sierra Leonean who caught the virus, recounted how she fell gravely ill, recovered and is now back treating patients, but continues to face the stigma even as a survivor.
Ban’s tour began in Liberia and Sierra Leone on Friday and will end in Ghana, site of the UN Ebola response mission (UNMEER), after a visit to Mali.
Ban said he was moved by Johnson’s story that she still faced a stigma as a survivor.
UNMEER is a short-term mission and Ban said he hoped its work would be done in a year from its formation last September.
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