CRI听力:Sierra Leone Enforces Curfew as Ebola Virus Resurfaces in North West Regions

Sierra Leone has enforced a three-week curfew in two northern districts after 15 new cases of Ebola were reported in the region last week. This was the highest weekly Ebola case count in the country in nearly three months.

In Guinea, the outbreak has spread into districts previously free of the disease, including the border area with Guinea Bissau.

Among the three worst-affected countries, only Liberia has been declared Ebola-free since May.

Joanne Liu, head of the medical charity Doctors without Borders warns that the epidemic could flare-up again, but that health authorities are no better equipped to control it than they were a year ago.

"The reality today, if we were to have Ebola to hit at the scale that it did in August and September, we would hardly do much better than we did last time around."

Week after week, up to a few dozen new Ebola cases are still being reported in West Africa. Public health officials are racing to find out what's driving these pockets of Ebola transmission.

In Sierra Leone, health workers are still struggling to convince some people not to seek treatment from local healers.

In Guinea the challenges are greater, with surprise cases surfacing beyond the known chains of transmission. The practice of unsafe burials, that could spread the disease further, are still taking place, with 19 such cases reported just last week in Guinea.

Liu says there was a state of "semi-denial" about the virus similar to the time when it was first discovered 18 months ago.

"It's not over until it's over. I'm very concerned about the fact that there's a general fatigue and waning of attention on Ebola, and that people are basically declaring victory before it's time. And that is really detrimental. We need to finish the job. To get to the finish line, we're going to probably need to double our effort; otherwise we will never get there."

Leaders of the G7 industrial nations this week vowed to wipe out the epidemic that has killed more than 11,100 people across West Africa, but offered little concrete action.

The World Health Organization has been criticized for its slow reaction when the epidemic first broke out.

The WHO did not declare an international public health emergency until August last year, more than eight months after the first Ebola case, delaying resources to the sick.

But last month they pledged to setup an international epidemic prevention task force.

Liu, however, says medical workers on the ground are not optimistic about the world's response to another potential outbreak.

"What happened in Ebola is we didn't get one earthquake, but we've been getting a mass casualty event on a daily basis for 10 months. Can we sustain that? And will there be an international workforce ready to deploy that long? And that's what we need to ensure, that it's not only a very appealing sexy ideas, but it's the fact that how will it translate into action in the field afterwards?"

Those on the front-lines of the battle against Ebola say that top leaders need to step up efforts to turn promises into reality.

For CRI I'm Poornima Weerasekara.