EBOLA KILLS MORE THAN 4,800 PEOPLE

We don’t really know how many deaths there have been, because there are a lot of people who have died alone … or out in the bush,” WHO spokesman Dan Epstein said. Those deaths go unreported, Epstein noted, so the agency uses statistical models to account for what they estimate is the number of unreported cases. Health workers on the ground in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone often rely on anecdotal evidence to estimate the number of Ebola deaths in a particular village or town. During field studies, locals might tell disease trackers that their village has had 20 deaths from Ebola, but “no one is verifying it,” Epstein said. A slight decline in cases in a few days versus getting this thing closed out is a completely different ball game,” said World Health Organization assistant director general Bruce Aylward on a conference call earlier this week. “It’s like saying your pet tiger is under control.

Keeping track of Ebola in West Africa is particularly difficult, health experts say, given that so many patients either never visit a health facility or are turned away because of overcrowding. Also, health workers have had to combat widespread distrust of health care workers among many victims of the disease who feel stigmatized and may not come forward when they are feeling symptoms. They might die quietly in their homes, unknown to WHO.  “In the African nations currently experiencing the outbreak, patients don’t trust their local health care systems – sometimes with good reason,” Reuters reported in July. Locals often turn to traditional healers, meaning their official diagnoses are never recorded.