The Ebola crisis has "passed the tipping point" and there is a reasonable chance the deadly outbreak could end quickly, the UN special envoy says.
UN Ebola co-ordinator David Nabarro welcomed fresh data from the World Health Organisation showing the three hardest-hit countries in West Africa had registered the lowest weekly tally of new cases in months.
"I'm absolutely delighted to see that the incidence of confirmed Ebola cases week-on-week is reducing," Nabarro told AFP on Thursday in an interview.
"This suggests that we have passed the tipping point and we are beginning to be on the downward slope of the outbreak."
Liberia reported its lowest weekly number of new cases since early June, while Guinea and Sierra Leone had the fewest new cases since August.
More than 8400 people have died since the Ebola outbreak began in Guinea in December 2013, nearly all of them in the three hardest-hit countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Nabarro cautioned that more efforts were needed to end the outbreak but if regulations and practices put in place to combat transmission were upheld, the downward trend would continue.
A US study released this week says Liberia, the worst-affected country, could see an end to the epidemic in June, while Sierra Leone's government has set a target of being Ebola-free by the end of May.
The United Nations, which is leading the international response to the Ebola crisis, has shifted to a "phase two" approach that focuses more on contact tracing than emergency treatment, Nabarro says.
A key challenge in the coming weeks will be to prevent complacency in communities that have observed strict rules on physical contact to prevent the spread.
"People are itching to get back to touching each other," said Nabarro, who just returned from his sixth trip to West Africa. "Will that in turn lead to more transmission and risk? That's the worry."
The WHO executive board is due to engage in some soul-searching about its handling of the Ebola crisis at a meeting in Geneva on January 21.
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