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Ebola outbreak will take six months to control, says humanitarian organisation
It will be a matter of months before the Ebola outbreak currently gripping West Africa is brought under control, according to humanitarian group Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
At a meeting in Geneva today, MSF's president Joanne Lui said: "In terms of timeline, we're not talking in terms of weeks, we're talking in terms of months. We need a commitment for months, at least I would say six months, and I'm being, I would say, very optimistic."
She stressed that in order to tackle the outbreak, more action was required from the international community, which should be led by the World Health Organisation (WHO). "All governments must act. It must be done now if we want to contain this epidemic," she said.
"WHO needs to take leadership and bring some strong elements into the field at all operational levels. It's already started but it needs to happen at all levels."
She emphasised the particular importance of controlling the outbreak in Liberia to containing the epidemic. "If we don't stabilise Liberia, we will never stabilise the region," she said.
Her comments followed an announcement made earlier today by the World Health Organisation that the scale of the crisis was “vastly underestimated”.
As of Monday this week, 1,069 people had died as a result of the epidemic, which started in Guinea in February.