GENEVA: Ebola-related deaths in west Africa will be higher than the number of people directly infected because of its disruption to already weak health care services, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday. The WHO is convening a meeting in Geneva next week with finance and health ministers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, donors and NGOs, to develop practical actions on how to improve health care systems for the future. Ebola has strongly impacted the already weak health systems, and Ebola has probably killed more people than the 6,000 linked to the disease itself, said the WHOs coordinator of health systems, Gerard Schmets. He added: This is a real critical situation that these countries are facing. Vaccination programs and general health services have stopped altogether in the worst affected areas of the three countries, which have born the brunt of the outbreak, while pregnancy care has also been hit, he said. There was already a shortage of health workers Sierra Leone had only two doctors for every 100,000 people, or just about 120 doctors for six million people before the Ebola outbreak began. Since then, health workers have been disproportionately hit by the virus, with 333 dying across the three countries, out of 575 who were infected, the WHO says. Malaria remains a pressing problem, while people with chronic diseases have had to interrupt their treatment to move to other districts to continue their care, Schmets said. The gathering on Dec. 10-11 will include representatives of the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the Centers for Disease Control and groups working to combat Ebola on the ground in the affected countries. In the longer run we need to strengthen these health systems and to rebuild health systems that will be stronger, to be able to address future emergencies, Schmets said. Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders warned Tuesday that the international response to Ebola is still too slow and piecemeal as officials said the disease is further crippling the economies of the three West African countries hardest hit. The vast majority of infections are in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, poor countries that have been left to handle the crisis without sufficient help, said the medical aid group. Foreign governments have focused primarily on financing or building Ebola case management structures, leaving staffing them up to national authorities, local health care staff and NGOs (non-government organizations) which do not have the expertise required to do so, said the group, which is a primary provider of treatment in the outbreak, said in a statement Tuesday. It reiterated its call for countries with biological-disaster response teams to deploy them. In addition to killing thousands, the Ebola outbreak, which was identified in March in Guinea, has shut hospitals, schools and markets, hampered cross-border trade and resulted in the suspension of many of the airline flights.

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Ebola hits health care systems in affected countries