Hundreds of Ebola cases a week but Canadian doctor sees hope in Sierra Leone

For much of this past year, Ebola has been a nightmare haunting the entire globe.... and a very real tragedy for those people living and working in West Africa.

Now that the year is drawing to a close, we're taking the opportunity to take stock of where we are in the fight to contain this virus.

According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, more than 7,000 people have died in the current outbreak. Those deaths are concentrated in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone -- where the virus does continue to spread most quickly.

When the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon toured the hardest hit countries himself last week, he described the health workers fighting to contain the outbreak as "the most noble face of humankind."

Canadian doctor Paul Pronyk is one of those health workers. He's a Senior Health Specialist for UNICEF who's been overseeing the agency's implementation of Ebola Community Care Centres across Sierra Leone. He's normally based in Freetown but we reached him today in Dakar, Senegal.

Médecins Sans Frontières is one of the groups that's been on the front line of the efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak. Dr. Joanne Liu is the International president of Médecins Sans Frontières. She was in Montreal.

The World Health Organization is the global public health body that's been overseeing all on-the-ground efforts to halt the spread of Ebola. Dr. Bruce Aylward is its Assistant Director-General and Lead with the Ebola Response Team with the World Health Organization. He joined us from Geneva, Switzerland.

There has been on-going coverage of the Ebola outbreak on this program. To listen to segments from our archives, search using the keyword Ebola,at the top right of this page.