According to The Associated Press, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is warning that the Ebola virus is spreading in West Africa.
“It is absolutely premature to start being optimistic.” Birte Hald, Head of Emergency Operations at IFRC stated today.
Despite recently reported gains in slowing Ebola transmission rates in Liberia, the rate of infection in neighboring Guinea has increased as health officials finally make their way into previously uncooperative rural communities, who have been hiding Ebola-infected relatives at home.
Health analysts have also suggested that the international efforts to end the Ebola crisis have entered a stage where health authorities cannot recruit adequate numbers of international or local health workers to staff newly built health facilities.
Antoine Petitbon, a representative with the French Red Cross, has announced that his organization is having an easier time recruiting health workers for Iraq when compared to West Africa, and despite significant security concerns in Iraq.
Petitbon highlighted the perceived risks and hysteria surrounding the Ebola crisis, explaining that up to sixty percent of health workers who planned to volunteer in West Africa were eventually talked out of it by family members and friends.
