--- title: Ebola Outbreak: WHO Pleads for Health Care Workers in West Africa description: More than 500 doctors and 1,000 health care workers are needed to combat Ebola in Western Africa, WHO Head Margaret Chan said Friday. canonical: https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-12T15:41:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:41.446Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Outbreak: WHO Pleads for Health Care Workers in West Africa og:description: More than 500 doctors and 1,000 health care workers are needed to combat Ebola in Western Africa, WHO Head Margaret Chan said Friday. og:url: https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbb31cb5b71b8c97/6986a302f983e777d804f972/ebola4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3500 og:image:height: 1969 og:image:alt: Health workers remove the body of Prince Nyentee, a man whom local residents said died of Ebola virus in Monrovia og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Outbreak: WHO Pleads for Health Care Workers in West Africa twitter:description: More than 500 doctors and 1,000 health care workers are needed to combat Ebola in Western Africa, WHO Head Margaret Chan said Friday. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbb31cb5b71b8c97/6986a302f983e777d804f972/ebola4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Health Group Pleads for More Workers to Combat Ebola Outbreak > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Sep 12, 2014 3:41 PM UTC  Health workers remove the body of Prince Nyentee, a 29-year-old man whom local residents said died of Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia on Sept. 11, 2014. Health workers remove the body of Prince Nyentee, a 29-year-old man whom local residents said died of Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia on Sept. 11, 2014. James Giahyue—Reuters  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Sep 12, 2014 3:41 PM UTC More than 500 doctors and 1,000 health care workers are needed to combat the [Ebola](http://time.com/3110832/what-comes-after-ebola/) outbreak in West Africa, where the spread of the deadly disease is outpacing the scale of the response, the World Health Organization said Friday. “Countries are truly, truly committed, and they want to understand exactly what it is needed from the countries so they can provide the support,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said at a news conference. “I am confident and optimistic that countries will provide the support.” The remarks came as the organization announced that it had confirmed more than 4,700 cases of Ebola and 2,400 deaths. The WHO has 500 health care workers focused on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, but they don’t remain there at all the times, Chan said. The organization also announced Friday that Cuba has agreed to send 165 health workers to Sierra Leone to combat Ebola. “Cuba is world-famous for its ability to train outstanding doctors and nurses and for its generosity in helping fellow countries on the route to progress,” Chan said in a statement. Continued support from countries around the world is essential to fighting the disease, Chan said. The United Kingdom announced earlier this week that it would send experts to the country to construct an Ebola treatment center, and Chan said she expected more countries to announce their own efforts to combat Ebola soon. ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/"},"headline":"Health Group Pleads for More Workers to Combat Ebola Outbreak","datePublished":"2014-09-12T15:41:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:41.446Z","description":"2,400 have died in the latest outbreak of the disease","url":"https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/","keywords":["Infectious Disease","health","World Health Organization","ebola"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbb31cb5b71b8c97/6986a302f983e777d804f972/ebola4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbb31cb5b71b8c97/6986a302f983e777d804f972/ebola4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Health workers remove the body of Prince Nyentee, a man whom local residents said died of Ebola virus in Monrovia","caption":"Health workers remove the body of Prince Nyentee, a man whom local residents said died of Ebola virus in Monrovia","creditText":"James Giahyue—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/","name":"Health Group Pleads for More Workers to Combat Ebola Outbreak"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3340439/ebola-outbreak-west-africa-who/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```