The organizations fighting the deadliest Ebola epidemic ever recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo now say their central obstacle is not the virus but the shortage of people trained to treat it. A World Health Organization technical officer told reporters in Geneva on Sept. 8 that a lack of trained staff, operational partners and funding has created a bottleneck in efforts to expand care as the outbreak keeps moving into new territory.
The arithmetic behind that warning is stark. WHO technical officer Luca Fontana said close to 1,400 treatment beds are already open across 59 treatment centers, a pace he described as one of the fastest scale-ups he has seen, including during the West Africa epidemic of 2014 through 2016. Even so, he said roughly another 1,600 beds are still required. WHO estimates about three health workers are needed for each Ebola bed, so filling a planned 3,000 beds would take roughly 9,000 staff, meaning about 5,000 more people would have to be recruited and trained.
