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FREETOWN/KINSHASA. — Five people are being infected with Ebola every hour in Sierra Leone and the rate is expected to double by the end of October, the Save the Children charity has warned.
Justin Forsyth, the chief executive of Save the Children charity, said yesterday that “the scale of the Ebola epidemic is devastating and growing every day”.
“We need a co-ordinated international response that ensures treatment centres are built and staffed immediately,” Forsyth said.

The charity issued the appeal as Britain hosted a conference in London to gather support for the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone, its former colony.
There were an estimated 765 new cases last week, the charity said, but only 327 beds across the country.

The number of cases was likely to be “massively” under-reported, as “untold numbers of children are dying anonymously at home or in the streets”, it said.

“We are facing the frightening prospect of an epidemic which is spreading like wildfire across Sierra Leone, with the number of new cases doubling every three weeks,” said Rob MacGillivray, the charity’s country director in Sierra Leone .

“It’s very difficult at this stage to even give accurate figures on the number of children who are dying from Ebola, as monitoring systems cannot keep pace with the outbreak.”

Meanwhile, the death toll from the deadly Ebola virus has reached 42 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the nation attempts to contain its second outbreak this year.

On Wednesday, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said that health workers were among the latest victims of the virus in the country.

In a remote region near the town of Boende, located some 800km northwest of Kinshasa, about 70 Ebola cases have been confirmed.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and Kinshasa authorities say the current outbreak is “distinct and independent” and not related to the one that has taken thousands of lives in West African countries, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and Guinea.

The rise in the death toll comes about one week after DR Congo prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo said the outbreak in his country was almost over.

On October 1, the WHO said the Ebola death toll in West Africa had risen to 3 338, with more than half of the victims being in Liberia. — Al Jazeera.