Number of Ebola cases crosses 10,000: WHO

Geneva, Oct 25 (IANS/EFE) The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed Saturday that the number of Ebola cases has risen to more than 10,000 in the eight affected countries, two of which, Nigeria and Senegal, had recently been declared free of the virus.

Of a total of 10,141 people infected, 4,922 have died, according to the latest statistics released by the WHO on the state of the Ebola epidemic.

The WHO says that 4,655 of the infected are in Liberia, 3,896 in Sierra Leone, 1,553 in Guinea, 20 in Nigeria, four in the US and one each in Senegal, Spain and Mali.

A week ago, Nigeria and Senegal were declared free of Ebola after 42 days had passed -- double the maximum incubation period of 21 days -- without anyone showing symptoms of the disease.

The WHO says that in the seven months of the epidemic, 450 health workers have been infected, of whom 228 are in Liberia, 127 in Sierra Leone, 80 in Guinea, three in the US and one in Spain.

Of that number, more than half (244) have died of the infection, the international organisation says.

The WHO includes in its statistics the little two-year-old girl who died Friday in Mali, a case that has caused significant concern since the child made a long trip from Guinea to her homeland before dying, and was in contact with many people along the way.

US President Barack Obama said Saturday that "we have to be guided by the facts not fear" following the alarm caused by the first diagnosis of the virus in teeming New York City.

"We have to be guided by the science. We have to be guided by the facts, not fear. Yesterday, New Yorkers showed us the way. They did what they do every day -- jumping on buses, riding the subway, crowding into elevators, heading into work, gathering in parks," Obama said in his usual Saturday address, which this week he dedicated to the Ebola epidemic.

Obama delivered a calming message to the nation in a week when at the same time that the three infected people were pronounced free of the disease, word came about the infection of a doctor in New York.

--IANS/EFE

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