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UN chief: Ebola cases in Mali a 'deep concern'
The United Nations chief warned Friday that Ebola may be easing in part of West Africa but is still hitting hard in other areas and outpacing the international response
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he United Nations chief warned Friday 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," U.N. 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 on Friday.
Anthony Banbury, who heads the U.N. fight against Ebola in West Africa, told the U.N. 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.
