Freetown, Sierra Leone (PANA) – As the Ebola virus disease outbreak in Sierra Leone continues to accelerate, community Ebola care units are being established in the worst-hit areas of the country to shorten waiting times and provide care closer to home, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in the country.
Each unit would have an average of eight beds, and are staffed by health care workers and members of the community trained in infection control.
They give Ebola care such as oral rehydration salts and medicines to relieve symptoms and treat other common causes of fever such as malaria, it said, adding that the current plans for building Ebola care units would add an extra 1,000 beds for people ill with Ebola virus disease.
Sierra Leone is among the three West African countries that are worst-hit by the disease, with a total of 930 deaths from 2950 cases reported as at October 8, and hundreds of new infections identified each week.
With so many critically ill people to care for, the WHO said treatment centres are currently overwhelmed and struggling to meet demand.
”The goal shared by the Government of Sierra Leone and partners working to overcome Ebola is to increase the number of beds in Ebola treatment units as rapidly but also as safely as possible.”
”This takes time as facilities must be constructed or redesigned to reduce the risk of health care worker infection and increase patient safety. Already 123 health care workers have developed Ebola virus disease and, tragically, 97 of them have died,” the Office said.
Ebola deaths since the latest outbreak have topped 4,000 mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
