Desperate Fear and Ignorance
"All between the houses you could see people fleeing with items looted from the patients. The whole of West Point will be infected."
Anonymous senior police official, Monrovia, Liberia
Health workers prepare disinfectant in
containers, foreground, to spray at an Ebola treatment center in the
city of Monrovia, Liberia, Monday, Aug. 18, 2014. Liberia's armed forces
were given orders to shoot people trying to illegally cross the border
from neighboring Sierra Leone, which was closed to stem the spread of
Ebola, local newspaper Daily Observer reported Monday. (AP Photo/Abbas
Dulleh)
Some thirty patients were staying at the centre, isolated for 21 days representing the incubation period for the virus, to determine whether they were symptomatic of Ebola. Many of them, when the raid occurred, were fearful of the violence and fled. Now, says Mr. Nyenswah, they must be found and transferred to the Ebola centre at the capital's largest hospital.
The looters took with them medical equipment, mattresses and sheets with bloodstains and other bodily fluids, likely vomit, feces and sweat, all bodily substances capable of communicating the virus and spreading it into the community. This represents a new challenge for an already-stretched Liberian health authority whose officials are already struggling to contain the outbreak.
Order was restored by Liberian police to the West Point neighbourhood by Sunday, a day after the riot and looting took place. Home to about 50,000 people, West Point sits on land between the Montserrado River and the Atlantic Ocean, and distrust of government is high on the residents' agenda. Their home, the slum they live within, has been threatened, they believe, by government plans to clear the slum out.
And now, given the looting of materials whose condition is horribly contaminated ensuring that the spread of the communicable virus will be hastened, it is likely enough that the West Point slum will become a centre of a difficult-to-handle Ebola breakout. In Liberia, 413 people have already lost their lives to the Ebola virus, according to the World Health Organization.
Other countries across Africa are working to prevent the spread of the disease, imposing travel restrictions, suspending airline flights, and publishing public health messages, along with imposing quarantines. Nigeria, with the least numbers of infected people, is making progress in containing the disease. One Nigerian doctor managed to survive the disease and five others who were infected have almost fully recovered.
Tracking all those who have had physical contact with Ebola patients, closely monitoring them to be able to swiftly quarantine them should they show any symptoms is an integral tool to bring the outbreak to a conclusion. Nigeria had 242 people under surveillance and now 61 have been cleared and released on completion of the 21-day incubation period.
Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three most badly hit West African countries are themselves being isolated for the safety and protection of Africans living elsewhere, lest the disease spread its dread effects with impunity. Airlines have suspended flights to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, until such time as there is confidence through the World Health Organization that Ebola virus spread has been stemmed.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 18, 2014
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