Ebola cases in Mali a 'deep concern': Ban Ki-moon

World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan has been dispatched to Mali

The United Nations chief has warned that Ebola may be easing in part of West Africa but is still hitting hard in other areas and outpacing the international response.

"If we continue to accelerate our response we can contain and end the outbreak by the middle of next year," UN Secretary -General Ban Ki-moon said, calling for continued funding and especially health workers to volunteer in the region.

Authorities are closely watching a new front in the outbreak, a cluster of cases in Mali linked to the death of a 70-year-old Muslim imam who was brought to Mali's capital, Bamako, from neighboring Guinea and health officials didn't immediately recognize that he had Ebola.

"The new chain of transmission in Mali is a cause of deep concern," Ban said. He dispatched World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan to Mali yesterday.

Anthony Banbury, who heads the UN fight against Ebola in West Africa, told the UN Security Council that Ban ordered his mission to immediately establish a presence in Mali 'to stop the disease where it is before it spreads further'.

Chan said nearly 500 people are being monitored in Mali as authorities try to snuff out a second introduction of Ebola there. Six deaths have been recorded there, five in connection to the imam and one unrelated death last month.

In Mali, 'we have to really move with speed and scale and have a no-regret policy' in working to contain the disease, Chan said.

Chan cautioned against complacency throughout the region, where Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have been hardest-hit. Banbury warned by video conference of 'a long battle' to defeat the deadly disease, which has also spread to new hotspots in northern Guinea and western Sierra Leone.

He said the number of new cases weekly is declining or stabilizing, with 55% of known cases isolated and 87% of burials being carried out safely, but he stressed that many cases are still unreported.

Despite this important progress, Banbury said, "We are far, far away from ending this crisis."

"It's clear that more must be done to bring this crisis under control much, much more," Banbury said. "Having a declining overall caseload was very hard. Getting it down to zero is going to be much, much harder."

"We are deep in the midst of this Ebola crisis, a very dangerous crisis that poses today and will pose tomorrow a very serious threat to ... The countries that are now affected as well as other countries throughout the world," he said.