The Ebola epidemic is moving faster than the authorities can handle and could take six months to bring under control, medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has said.
The warning came a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) said the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.
New figures released by the UN health agency showed the death toll from the worst outbreak of Ebola in four decades had climbed to 1,145 in the four afflicted West African countries - Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
"It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," Joanne Liu, the chief of MSF, told reporters in Geneva on Friday. She added that it could take six months to get the upper hand.
"It is like wartime," she said a day after returning from the region. "I don't think we should focus on numbers. To really get a reality check, we're not talking in terms of weeks, but months to control the epidemic."
Elhadj As Sy, the new head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, painted a similarly bleak picture, speaking of a "fear factor" in affected countries that was hampering medical assistance.
Also recently returned from the region, As Sy said he agreed with MSF's' six-month timeline for bringing the outbreak under control.
The WHO said on Thursday it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response" to the epidemic.
"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.
There were signs too that affected countries were stepping up their efforts to contain the virus.
Sierra Leone's President Ernest Koroma announced plans on Friday for the construction of several more Ebola treatment centres, while urging the international community to "act quickly" in the fight against Ebola.
The four new centres would be built by the Red Cross and MSF, he said.
The epidemic erupted in the forested zone straddling the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia earlier this year, and later spread to Nigeria.
Liu said while Guinea was the initial epicentre of the disease, the pace there has slowed, with fears now focused on the other countries.
"If we don't stabilise Liberia, we'll never stabilise the region," she said.
No cure or vaccine is currently available for Ebola, with the WHO authorising the use of largely untested treatments in efforts to combat the disease.
Hard-hit nations are awaiting consignments of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds.
Canada says between 800 and 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would also be distributed through the WHO.
But MSF's Liu warned against focusing on drugs.
(Aljazeera)
