With surge in Liberia, Ebola case toll above 4,200
Source: AP-Excite
By SARAH DiLORENZO and MARIA CHENG
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) A surge in Ebola infections in Liberia is driving a spiraling outbreak in West Africa that is increasingly putting health workers at risk as they struggle to treat an overwhelming number of patients.
A higher proportion of health workers has been infected in this outbreak than in any previous one. The latest infection was of a doctor with the World Health Organization treating patients in Sierra Leone. The organization gave no details, but an American who became infected while working in West Africa landed in the U.S. Tuesday to get treatment at Emory University Hospital.
This is the second WHO staffer to be infected in Sierra Leone, and the U.N. health agency said Tuesday that after an investigation of the first case, staffers battling Ebola there now have better working conditions including larger, more private quarters.
The outbreak sweeping West Africa is thought to have killed more than 2,200 people, and public health experts agree that it is out of control. More than 4,200 people have believed to have been sickened in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.
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A person wearing a haz-mat suit steps out of an ambulance as an ebola patient arrives for treatment, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Atlanta. The fourth American aid worker sickened with the Ebola virus arrived Tuesday morning for treatment at Emory University Hospital, where two others have been successfully treated. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
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