UN chief to host global Ebola recover conference on Friday

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon is scheduled to host an International Ebola Recovery Conference at in New York on Friday in cooperation with the presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, who are expected to be present, a spokesman announced here Monday.

"The conference, which will begin at 10 a.m. in the Trusteeship Council Chamber, aims to ensure that the Ebola affected countries receive the support and resources they need," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here. "It will take place in partnership with the African Union, the European Union, the World Bank and the African Development Bank."

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are three hardest-hit countries in West Africa by Ebola, and the epidemic promoted a global response, including the United Nations, the European Union and China.

The report of a new Ebola case in Liberia last week was not unexpected, and more like it may occur, according to the UN special envoy on Ebola, David Nabarro.

The 17-year-old whose death signaled the outbreak in Liberia may have come into contact with an infected animal or picked up the virus from a person in whom it had lingered beyond the 21-day quarantine period, reports quoted experts as saying.

In early June, there were 31 new cases of Ebola reported in a growing geographic area in Guinea and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization said. At the beginning of the second week in June, 14 additional cases were reported.

The latest figures mark the second straight week that the number of Ebola cases in West Africa has increased, reports said.

In March, the World Health Organization painted a grim picture in the biggest-ever Ebola outbreak, estimating that the virus had killed over 10,000 people, mostly in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Fifteen other Ebola deaths also occurred in Mali, Nigeria and the United States.

When Ebola was first detected in March 2014 in Guinea's forest, officials assumed the deadly virus could quickly be stamped out, just as it had in more than two dozen previous outbreaks, mostly in central and eastern Africa.

However, health officials now acknowledge they were too slow to respond to this emergency, allowing Ebola to cross porous borders in a region where broken health systems were unable to stop its spread.