Ebola Virus Outbreak Could Happen Again: 'We are still making the same mistakes,' MSF

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a humanitarian aid organization also known as Doctors Without Borders, warns that if Ebola were to cause an outbreak in West Africa again, health authorities will be ill-equipped to handle it.

"The reality today is if Ebola were to hit on scale it did in August and September, we would hardly do much better than we did the last time around," said Joanne Liu, head of MSF, on Saturday during a meeting on Ebola in Dakar as reported by Reuters.

The fears stemmed from the fact that new Ebola cases have increased in Guinea and Sierra Leone in the past two weeks. Even though the virus is spreading more slowly than at its peak last year and Liberia has been declared Ebola-free in May, there should be no lapses in leadership because of political interests.

"We are still making the same mistakes as we did in the past," Dr Liu said via Sky News. "We know now that engaging the community in the response is essential, but we also know that leadership at the government level... is absolutely essential."

Liu also shared that she and some of her colleagues were disappointed by recommendations of World Health Assembly and by the Group of Seven industrial nations, G7, according to The Financial Express.

"We've been disappointed by the World Health Assembly and again by the G7 in terms of their recommendations," Liu said, referring to a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting last month.

WHO declared an international health emergency in August of last year, eight months after the first case of Ebola, thereby resulting to delayed resources that could have assisted those who were affected.

Jerome Mouton, MSF country head for Guinea said that we are too optimistic when it comes to Ebola.

"We are in the same situation where we are overly optimistic, saying that it is almost finished and there's no problem but in fact it's a big problem as there is potential for this to again set off a big epidemic," he said, according to Reuters.

He added that he expected that the disease would end for good last month but in the recent spike of cases, he is less optimistic.

In the recent weeks, it has been reported that Ebola has spread to parts of Guinea, including the area in the Guinea Bissau border, that were previously unaffected by the outbreak. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone has the highest daily count for new Ebola cases in almost three months.