UN battling to keep track of ebola

Authorities are having trouble figuring out how many more people are getting ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone and where the hot spots are in those countries, harming efforts to get control of the deadly outbreak, the UN’s top ebola official in West Africa said yesterday.

“The challenge is good information, because information helps tell us where the disease is, how it’s spreading and where we need to target our resources,” Anthony Banbury said by phone from the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or Unmeer, is based.

Health experts say the key to stopping ebola is breaking the chain of transmission by tracing and isolating those who have had contact with ebola patients or victims. Healthcare workers can not do that if they don’t know where new cases are emerging.