"We will succeed. The world will succeed," Tony Banbury, the outgoing head oof the United Nations Emergency Ebola Response Mission (UNMEER), told reporters on Jan. 2, 2015 in Accra, Ghana. Twitter/UNMEER

ACCRA, Ghana, Jan. 2 (UPI) -- On his last day as head of the United Nations Emergency Ebola Response Mission, Tony Banbury predicted the Ebola outbreak in West Africa would end in 2015.

Although the end is admittedly "not close," Banbury expressed optimism during a press conference in Accra on Friday that "we will succeed. The world will succeed."


More than 20,000 people were infected with Ebola in 2014, the World Health Organization reported. Nearly 8,000 have died since the outbreak began in December 2013.

"We are engaged in an epic battle," Banbury acknowledged.

UNMEER is headquartered in Accra with a staff of 30 whose main mission is to "identify everything that was required to bring this multifaceted crisis to an end," Banbury told Deutsche Welle. A staff of 118 are deployed to the three countries hardest hit by the outbreak: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

A district-by-district approach is needed to stop the outbreak, Banbury concluded. Communities are key, he said, to confining transmission and preventing further spread and bigger outbreaks.

Banbury will be succeeded by Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.