US envoy cheers gains in battle

The US envoy to the UN, Samantha Power, on Sunday credited a reported drop in new Ebola infections in West Africa to US and other international aid efforts.

Power, who just returned from a tour of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries worst-hit by the Ebola epidemic that has killed more than 4,900 people, said one of the biggest improvements was being seen in burial practices.

"In Liberia, thanks to the presence of the CDC and the US military, we see the rate of safe burial, which is a key part of the solution here, skyrocketing to close to 90 percent in the capital Monrovia," she said on CBS's "Face the Nation" talk show.

"In Sierra Leone, the rate of safe burial within 24 hours is close to 100 percent," she said, citing British aid efforts there.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Powers said, estimate "around half to 70 percent of the infections may well come from unsafe burial," she noted.

She added that she had just spoken to the head of the UN's Ebola operation, who had recently toured rural areas, reports AFP.

"And he said wherever we have an Ebola treatment unit, a lab and social mobilization -- infection rates are coming way down, where we don't, they're not," Powers recounted.

Meanwhile, authorities in Sierra Leone say a doctor has died of Ebola - the fifth local doctor in the West African nation to succmb to the disease.