U.N. Secretary General to Visit Ebola-Plagued Nations

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, plans to visit the three West African countries that have been hit the hardest by the Ebola outbreak, according to a senior United Nations official.

Mr. Ban is to make the announcement at a year-end news conference on Wednesday. The director general of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, and his special envoy on Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, are to accompany him to West Africa.

The trip, which is to begin later this week, seems designed to send a message of solidarity with the three affected countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The United Nations, which has been accused of responding too slowly to the outbreak, failed to meet its own targets for stopping the spread of the virus, and remains far from achieving its ambition to wipe it out completely from West Africa.

United Nations officials insist that they are making progress in containing the disease: Its growth has slowed in some places. Even so, they admit they are unlikely to meet their year-end goal of treating all patients and safely burying all the dead.

So far, according to the World Health Organization, Ebola has infected at least 18,000 people and left a death toll of at least 6,800. The geography of the infection has shifted, complicating the efforts to eradicate it. For instance, in Sierra Leone, Ebola is ravaging the western part of the country, while only a handful of new cases are surfacing in previous hot spots.

United Nations officials have acknowledged in recent weeks that they are continuing to chase the outbreak rather than end it.

Ebola has presented a major test of Mr. Ban’s leadership. In mid-September, he established an unusual emergency mission to coordinate the global response and he pressed world leaders to send money, doctors, and medical supplies. So far, his appeal for $1.5 billion remains underfunded. Big treatment centers have gone into operation just as the virus has raced ahead to other areas. It has been especially difficult to persuade skilled foreign health workers to work in Ebola clinics.

Mr. Ban had planned to visit the Ebola-affected countries earlier, but his aides said it had been difficult to accommodate that trip into an already busy travel schedule.