Governments and organisations from across the world, including the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Cuba, have pledged military and civilian personnel alongside cash and medical supplies. But aid workers say it is still not enough.
The WHO said Liberia had 315 bed spaces for Ebola patients and aid agencies have promised to set up 440 more, but the country needs a further 1,550 beds that nobody has yet offered to provide. In Sierra Leone, 297 planned new beds would almost double existing capacity, but a further 532 were needed.
The lack of beds means those infected with Ebola are still being turned away from hospitals and must be cared for at home, where they risk infecting yet more people.
As a result, part of the aid response is now focusing on setting up care centres in communities and training locals, including 11,000 teachers in Liberia, to educate people about how to combat the disease.
The first 9,000 of a planned 50,000 kits — containing protective gowns, gloves and masks for family members to look after Ebola sufferers — arrived in Liberia, according to UNICEF.
However, WHO said these efforts were still being resisted in neglected, remote communities with a distrust of outsiders, like the one where eight members of an Ebola team were killed in a attack in southeast Guinea last week.
“There are reports from Fassankoni, Guinea, that communities have set up roadblocks to screen entering response teams.”
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