‘Ebola got a head start on us,’ U.N. official admits

The world is falling behind in a desperate race to gain the upper hand over the deadly Ebola outbreak, a top United Nations official warned on Tuesday.

“Ebola got a head start on us,” said Anthony Banbury, head of the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response.

“It is far ahead of us, it is running faster than us, and it is winning the race,” the Briton told the U.N. Security Council in New York, by remote link from UNMEER headquarters in Accra.

“If Ebola wins, we the peoples of the United Nations lose so very much,” he said.

“We either stop Ebola now or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan,” Banbury stressed.

He said that with infection rates rising exponentially every day. UNMEER will need 7,000 beds for treatment.

Infographic: Ebola virus

“There’s much bad news about Ebola but the good news is we know how to stop it,” said Banbury.

But to push back the spread “we must defeat Ebola and we must do it fast,” he said.

“With every day that passes, the number of sick people increases,” Banbury added.

“Time is our biggest enemy. We must use every minute of every day to our advantage and that is what UNMEER is doing.”

WHO assistant director general Bruce Aylward, describing his figures as a working forecast, said the epidemic “could reach 5,000 to 10,000 cases per week by the first week of December.”

The latest death toll is 4,447, from 8,914 recorded infection cases, Aylward said as the worst-ever Ebola outbreak spirals in the three hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.