TEMPO.CO, Geneva - The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ebola infections could triple to 20,000 by November if there are no significant efforts to stop the outbreak.

"Without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from Ebola are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months," the WHO said in study as reported by New Delhi Television yesterday.

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 2,800 lives and infected more than 5,800 others. However, the WHO study estimates that if there is no significant action taken, "the cumulative number of confirmed and probable cases by November 2 will be 5,925 in Guinea, 9,939 in Liberia and 5,063 in Sierra Leone".

"The total for those three countries alone will therefore surpass 20,000 cases," said the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday.

With the soaring number of infections, the number of deaths would also increase. The fatality rate currently stands at about 71 percent. "We are seeing exponential growth and we need to act now," said Christopher Dye, co-author of the study jointly carried out with the Imperial College in London.

"If we don't stop the epidemic very soon, this is going to turn from a disaster into a catastrophe," he told reporters in Geneva, warning that the epidemic might simply "rumble on as it has for the last few months for the next few years."

Prior to the current epidemic, the first Ebola outbreak happened in Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, when 280 people died.

NDTV | ROSALINA