Liberia declares a state of emergency over worst ever Ebola outbreak

Liberia declared a 90-day state of emergency as the World Health Organisation said that 932 people have died from the recent Ebola outbreak. This makes this recent epidemic the world’s worst ever Ebola outbreak in history.

Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said that “ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease.”

“The government and people of Liberia require extraordinary measures for the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people,” Sirleaf said in an official statement.

Meanwhile, United States President Barack Obama said that it is “premature” to send an experimental drug for the treatment of Ebola to West Africa.

ZMapp, a drug created using tobacco plants and which had previously only been tested on primates, was used on two American aid workers who contracted the Ebola virus while in Liberia. Their conditions appear to be improving.

“We’ve got to let the science guide us and I don’t think all the information is on whether the drug is helpful,” Obama said. “The Ebola virus, both currently and in the past, is controllable if you have a strong public health infrastructure in place.”

“We’re focusing on the public health approach right now, but I will continue to seek information about what we’re learning about these drugs going forward,” Obama said.

He added that the public health systems of the countries affected have been “overwhelmed”.

“They weren’t able to identify and then isolate cases quickly enough,” Obama said. “As a consequence, it spread more rapidly than has been typical with the periodic Ebola outbreaks that occurred previously”.

The Pentagon have developed an Ebola diagnostic test which UN health regulators have authorised for use abroad on military personnel, aid workers and workers and emergency responders, the US Food and Drug Administration said.

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that it would ask medical ethics experts to explore the possibility of using experimental treatments as an emergency use.

There is no known cure for Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever often acquired upon contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or animal. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, headaches, kidney and liver problems, and internal bleeding.

Patrick Sawyer, a US citizen, died of Ebola in Nigeria after flying there from Liberia. Authorities said on Wednesday that a Nigerian nurse who had treated Sawyer had also died of Ebola and that five other people are being treated in an isolation ward in Lagos.