MOSCOW, January 1 (Sputnik) — The outgoing year 2014 has been marred by the largest ever-recorded Ebola outbreak, which has claimed the lives of 7,905 people, according to the data revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its latest situation report.
The WHO estimates that the Ebola virus has been confirmed or suspected in a total of 20,206 people since the outbreak began in Guinea in late 2013.
Most of the cases were recorded in the four hardest-hit West African countries – Guinea, Liberia, Mali and Sierra Leone, as well as in the four previously affected countries – Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States, according to the health watchdog.
Britain has been the latest addition to the list of affected countries, after a nurse who contracted the virus in Sierra Leone was admitted to a hospital in north London. She is being treated with experimental drugs, local media said.
The health agency said it aimed to bury all those who had died from the infection "safely and with dignity", and to isolate 100 percent of Ebola patients by 1 January, 2015.
Ebola is a deadly disease that spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, or though contact with contaminated clothing or possessions.
