埃博拉疫情整体趋缓但仍面临反复

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.

塞内加尔达喀尔——世界卫生组织(World Health Organization)宣布几内亚及塞拉利昂今年的新增埃博拉病例数量达到最低，但就在几天之后，也就是周二，世卫组织官员表示，在最近一周，新增病例提高了将近四倍，达到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.

随着利比里亚——另一个爆发埃博拉疫情的西非国家——本月宣布埃博拉疫情结束，塞拉利昂和几内亚的感染病例也有所减少，人们满怀希望地认为，史上最严重的埃博拉疫情可能很快就能结束。

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.

官员们警告称，由于埃博拉病例总数大幅下降，不应对最近病例的增加做出过度解读。就在3月15日那周，单单是几内亚就出现了95例新增病例，5月13日一份报告中的数据显示，那一周是今年新增病例最少的一周：九例，其中几内亚七例，塞拉利昂两例。

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.

卫生官员表示，随着疫情接近尾声，病例的剧增和锐减都是正常的。但他们还表示，一些持续存在的危险做法部分导致了病例的增加，比如几内亚地区埋葬埃博拉患者的危险行为。

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——大约27例——出现在几内亚，有一个地区已经成为重点疫区：首都科纳克里东南部的福雷卡里亚区，那里距离几内亚森林区的疫情源头非常远。但在福雷卡里亚区，以卫生的方式掩埋遗体的做法遇到过阻力。卫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.

“我们一直担心这个社区会出现一些病例，导致很多患者死亡，”世卫组织发言人玛格丽特·哈里斯(Margaret Harris)说，她指的是人们未能将尸体移交给埃博拉疫区的官方机构处理的情况。从疫情爆发以来，拒绝交出尸体的做法让卫生官员深受困扰。

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

“我们仍然担心还有一些不安全的埋葬行为，”她说。“埋葬问题非常棘手。”

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，已经派出专家小组前往福雷卡里亚区，帮助遏制疫情的蔓延。

“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.

“在疫情终结之前会出现病例增加和减少的情况，我们对此并没有感到吃惊，”无国界医生(Doctors Without Borders)驻布鲁塞尔的运营总监布里斯·德拉维涅(Brice de la Vigne)说。该组织在过去14个月中领导着应对埃博拉疫情的行动。

“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.”

“这绝不会把我们吓跑，这很正常，”德拉维涅说，但“我们知道仍然有人在葬礼上感染疾病”。

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.”

无国界医生驻科纳克里的官员西尔维·约恩克海勒(Sylvie Jonckheere)表示，官员们新一轮寻找患者的行动，也导致了发现病例增加。“他们一直在搜罗，”她说。“派很多人在村子里寻找患者。这与我们过去看到的埃博拉疫情没什么不同。”

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.

埃博拉在几内亚传播时间最长并非巧合，18个月前，疫情就是在几内亚爆发的。几内亚对外界——医生、卫生官员、政治人物——干预的抗拒要比塞拉利昂或利比里亚强烈。

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.

在几内亚，也不时有民众以暴力手段抵制控制疫情的行动。去年9月，在森林区，八名官员和记者在一场反埃博拉的集会上被村民打死。在那之前，医生和卫生官员多次遭袭，卫生官员根据村庄是否允许外部人士进入对抗疫情，将各个村庄分为“封闭”和“开放”两种。

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.

世卫组织5月13日公布的疫情报告显示，在这三个国家中，已有逾1.1万人死于埃博拉，另有超过2.6万例确诊病例及潜在和疑似病例。

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.

但该报告中一项重要的数据说明，埃博拉病例正在大幅减少：在这三个国家里，曾经报告过至少一个病例的55个地区里，有43个地区在六个多星期的时间里，没有报告过任何病例。