埃博拉疫情整體趨緩但仍面臨反覆

DAKAR, Senegal—Only days after declaring the lowest number of new Ebola cases in Guinea and Sierra Leone this year, officials at the World Health Organization said Tuesday that there had been a nearly fourfold increase during the Most recent week of reporting, to about 35 new cases.

塞內加爾達喀爾——世界衛生組織(World Health Organization)宣佈幾內亞及塞拉利昂今年的新增埃博拉病例數量達到最低，但就在幾天之後，也就是週二，世衛組織官員表示，在最近一週，新增病例提高了將近四倍，達到35例。

With Liberia, the other West African nation at the center of the epidemic, being declared free of Ebola this month, the recent drop in infections in Sierra Leone and Guinea had offered hope that the worst Ebola outbreak in history might end soon.

隨着利比里亞——另一個爆發埃博拉疫情的西非國家——本月宣佈埃博拉疫情結束，塞拉利昂和幾內亞的感染病例也有所減少，人們滿懷希望地認爲，史上最嚴重的埃博拉疫情可能很快就能結束。

Officials warned against reading too much into the latest uptick, given the steep overall decline in Ebola cases. As recently as the week of March 15, there were 95 new cases in Guinea alone. A May 13 report showed the lowest weekly total this year: nine new cases, seven in Guinea and two in Sierra Leone.

官員們警告稱，由於埃博拉病例總數大幅下降，不應對最近病例的增加做出過度解讀。就在3月15日那周，單單是幾內亞就出現了95例新增病例，5月13日一份報告中的數據顯示，那一週是今年新增病例最少的一週：九例，其中幾內亞七例，塞拉利昂兩例。

Health officials said that sharp falls and rises were normal as an epidemic approached its end. But they also said that some persistent risky practices, like unsafe burials of Ebola victims in Guinea, had contributed to the rise.

衛生官員表示，隨着疫情接近尾聲，病例的劇增和銳減都是正常的。但他們還表示，一些持續存在的危險做法部分導致了病例的增加，比如幾內亞地區埋葬埃博拉患者的危險行爲。

Most of the new cases, about 27, are in Guinea, and one area in particular is a problem spot: the Forecariah district southeast of the capital, Conakry. It is far from where the outbreak started, in Guinea’s Forest Region, but it is in an area where there has been resistance to the sanitary burials necessary to contain Ebola.

大部分新病例——大約27例——出現在幾內亞，有一個地區已經成爲重點疫區：首都科納克里東南部的福雷卡里亞區，那裏距離幾內亞森林區的疫情源頭非常遠。但在福雷卡里亞區，以衛生的方式掩埋遺體的做法遇到過阻力。衛生的掩埋方法是遏制埃博拉疫情的必要手段。

“We’ve been concerned about a number of cases coming from there, of people dying in the community,” said Dr. Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the W.H.O., referring to the failure to turn corpses over to the authorities in Ebola hot spots, a refusal that has bedeviled health officials since the outbreak began.

“我們一直擔心這個社區會出現一些病例，導致很多患者死亡，”世衛組織發言人瑪格麗特·哈里斯(Margaret Harris)說，她指的是人們未能將屍體移交給埃博拉疫區的官方機構處理的情況。從疫情爆發以來，拒絕交出屍體的做法讓衛生官員深受困擾。

“There is still some concern that there are unsafe burials going on,” she said. “The burial issue is still a very tough one.”

“我們仍然擔心還有一些不安全的埋葬行爲，”她說。“埋葬問題非常棘手。”

Dr. Harris said a team of experts had been sent to the Forecariah area to help combat the spread of the disease.

哈里斯表示，已經派出專家小組前往福雷卡里亞區，幫助遏制疫情的蔓延。

“It doesn’t surprise us that within the tail of the epidemic there are peaks and valleys,” said Brice de la Vigne, the Brussels operations director of Doctors Without Borders, which has led the response to the epidemic over the last 14 months.

“在疫情終結之前會出現病例增加和減少的情況，我們對此並沒有感到吃驚，”無國界醫生(Doctors Without Borders)駐布魯塞爾的運營總監布里斯·德拉維涅(Brice de la Vigne)說。該組織在過去14個月中領導着應對埃博拉疫情的行動。

“This is not scaring us beyond reason; it is normal,” Mr. de la Vigne said, but “we know that there are still people who are contaminating themselves at funerals.”

“這絕不會把我們嚇跑，這很正常，”德拉維涅說，但“我們知道仍然有人在葬禮上感染疾病”。

Adding to the cases are renewed efforts by officials to find the sick, said Sylvie Jonckheere, a Doctors Without Borders official in Conakry. “They’ve been doing a roundup,” she said. “They have plenty of people looking for the sick in the villages. It’s not really different from what we’ve seen with Ebola in the past.”

無國界醫生駐科納克里的官員西爾維·約恩克海勒(Sylvie Jonckheere)表示，官員們新一輪尋找患者的行動，也導致了發現病例增加。“他們一直在蒐羅，”她說。“派很多人在村子裏尋找患者。這與我們過去看到的埃博拉疫情沒什麼不同。”

It is not a coincidence that the disease is lingering longest in Guinea, where the outbreak began 18 months ago. In Guinea, resistance to the intervention of outsiders — doctors, health officials, politicians — has been stronger than in either Sierra Leone or Liberia.

埃博拉在幾內亞傳播時間最長並非巧合，18個月前，疫情就是在幾內亞爆發的。幾內亞對外界——醫生、衛生官員、政治人物——干預的抗拒要比塞拉利昂或利比里亞強烈。

Guinea has reacted with occasional violence to efforts to contain the disease. In the Forest Region, eight officials and journalists were killed by villagers during an anti-Ebola rally in September. Before that, doctors and health officials were repeatedly attacked, and villages were classified as “closed” or “open” by health officials, depending on whether they would allow outsiders in to fight the disease.

在幾內亞，也不時有民衆以暴力手段抵制控制疫情的行動。去年9月，在森林區，八名官員和記者在一場反埃博拉的集會上被村民打死。在那之前，醫生和衛生官員多次遭襲，衛生官員根據村莊是否允許外部人士進入對抗疫情，將各個村莊分爲“封閉”和“開放”兩種。

More than 11,000 people have died of Ebola in the three countries, and there have been over 26,000 confirmed, probable and suspected cases, according to the W.H.O.’s May 13 situation report on the epidemic.

世衛組織5月13日公佈的疫情報告顯示，在這三個國家中，已有逾1.1萬人死於埃博拉，另有超過2.6萬例確診病例及潛在和疑似病例。

But one telling statistic in the report indicates how sharply the Ebola epidemic has dropped off: Out of 55 districts in the three countries that had reported at least one case of the disease, 43 have not reported a single one for more than six weeks.

但該報告中一項重要的數據說明，埃博拉病例正在大幅減少：在這三個國家裏，曾經報告過至少一個病例的55個地區裏，有43個地區在六個多星期的時間裏，沒有報告過任何病例。