UN Says 16,000 Now Infected With Ebola

The World Health Organization (WHO) says over 16,000 people have been infected with the deadly Ebola virus and around 7,000 have lost their lives as a result of it. The UN health agency announced the new death toll on Friday. The figure demonstrates an increase of over 1,000 deaths since a report from two days before. Most of the new deaths were recorded in Liberia, which along with Sierra Leone and Guinea, is the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Based on the new data, there have been 16,169 cases in just the three countries — an increase of 268 cases since the report two days earlier. 

Around three dozen cases have also been reported elsewhere while, most recently, Mali began recording infections after people with the Ebola disease crossed over from neighboring Guinea. Since the process of collecting data about the Ebola outbreak is difficult and slow, death and infection tolls often see large rises when the backlog of information is cleared. The WHO, meanwhile, has warned that its figures may significantly underreport the actual number of the people diagnosed and killed by the virus.