World Health Organisation knew about Ebola outbreak in Guinea nine months ago

London, England ( October 10,2014) - - - Scientists knew about an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea nine months ago, Dr Chris Dye, Director of Strategy for the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva said today.

In an interview he told a clearly astonished journalist from the BBC's popular Today (radio) programme: "We've known about this outbreak for nine months now but until round about June or July it was a very small outbreak - relatively few cases - and not dis-similar from previous outbreaks we've seen in Central and Equatorial Africa."

The BBC journalist said: "Nine months ago? In March, Medicine sans Frontiers said that they were overwhelmed with cases in Guinea. That should have alerted the WHO and you should have managed to get straight on the phone to governments and they would have listened to you, surely?"

Said Dr Dye:" We were alerted by the government in Guinea in March and we began to take action at that point but . . . "

BBC: Did you at that point understand this was possibly very grave and communicate that to world leaders?"

Dye: "We didn't anticipate that this outbreak was going to be as big as it has become but frankly nobody was in a position to anticipate that at the time. The important thing now is not to look backwards but to look at where we are now at the moment and how we're going forward."

He said that over the last few days there had been a "tremendous escalation" of the international response and support for the three West African countries worst hit by an epidemic which some doctors believe rivals the outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s.

He said that these West African countries are "beginning" to get the help they need.

BBC: "Are you confident that the international community today is doing what it needs to do?"

Dye: "Yes, I'm confident."

He detailed what is required - $1 billion, of which $300 million has been raised and a further $150 million pledged plus 4,000 beds, one quarter of which have been supplied. "There are," said Dr Dye," 10,000 reported cases. We'll probably see a further 10,000 cases during the course of this epidemic."

He said the killer epidemic is spreading fast in places where it's hard to control, the capitals of the three worst affected West African states.

BBC:" It will spread across the world, won't it?"

Dye: "To some extent it will spread. It is bound to with so much travel, there is bound to be the escape of infection to other points of the world and we've seen that clearly in the last few days. We've seen it in the United States, the incident in Spain has been widely publicised, the alert in Macedonia yesterday - which hopefully will come to nothing."

According to a report last night, an un-named British man was admitted to a clinic in Macedonia after displaying symptoms associated with Ebola. He died shortly afterwards. The Macedonian health ministry said that the man and his companion had travelled from the UK raising fears they might have already passed the virus on to friends and family.

A report in ‘The Independent' today said if the worst fears are confirmed "it would be the first death of a UK national from Ebola, although the British nurse Paul Pooley was cured of the virus last month."

In a major shift of policy, Prime Minister David Cameron  has ordered passengers who boarded flights in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to face a medical assessment and temperature checks. Under the surprise move announced by Downing Street, people arriving at Gatwick, Heathrow and on Eurostar will be required to answer questions about their recent travel and with who they have been in contact.

At a forum on Ebola in Atlanta, USA the World Bank President, Jim Yong-Kim, said that the entire African continent could be decimated if the international community did not respond much more aggressively to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He said: "Unless we quickly contain and stop the Ebola epidemic nothing less than the future of not only West Africa but perhaps even Africa is at stake."

And things could get worse - much, much worse.

Towards the end of his interview with Dr Dye, the BBC journalist underlined the need for extra vigilance in the event of the Ebola virus mutating and becoming airborne.

Said Dr Dye: "That is purely speculative at the moment and there is no scientific basis for thinking that will happen but we're ready for surprises because we don't quite know what's going to happen, nobody knows that. We have to be extremely vigilant."

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