AlQa'dah 3, 1435, Aug 29, 2014, SPA -- The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said Thursday it plans on increasing emergency aid in West Africa as the region faces the worst outbreak of Ebola. Denise Brown, WFP regional director for West Africa, spoke in Dakar after visiting Liberia and Sierra Leone, and said, "what we saw when we were there is that the health structures are massively overwhelmed." Brown said that WFP has never responded to a crisis as pressing as the fatal viral outbreak but she said that the agency needs to "scale up" to provide air access, medical materials, body bags, and food to those in need. The WFP will send 50 additional specialized staff and has a $28 million reserve for air operations to use until the end of the year. The latest World Health Organization (WHO) figures released Thursday showed 3,062 Ebola cases so far, more than 1,500 deaths, and the U.N. agency warned of an expected 20,000 cases if the virus continues to spread.
