Panic as deadly Ebola virus spreads across West Africa
When everyone is an apparent threat, a potential
carrier of the deadly Ebola virus, panic inevitably
rises. Yesterday, as rumours spread that Ebola could
be caught by breathing the same air as the victims,
that fear turned into violence.
Since the outbreak of the deadly strain of Zaire
Ebola in Guinea in February, around 90 people have
died as the disease has travelled to neighbouring
Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mali. The outbreak has sent
shock waves through communities who know little of
the disease or how it is transmitted. The cases in Mali
have added to fears that it is spreading through West
Africa.
A spokesman for the medical charity Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF) said yesterday that a treatment
centre where patients were isolated in Macenta,
265 miles south-east of Guinea’s capital, Conakry,
had come under attack from an “angry crowd” who
accused health workers of bringing the disease to the
town, where at least 14 people have died from Ebola.
“We have evacuated all our staff and closed the
treatment centre,” the MSF spokesman Sam Taylor
said. “We’re working with the authorities to try and
resolve this problem as quickly as possible so we can
start treating people again.” He later told Bloomberg:
“We fully understand that the outbreak of Ebola is
alarming for the local population, but it is essential in
the fight against the disease that patients remain in
the treatment centre.”
It was not clear how many people had been
injured in the incident. A government statement said
the support of aid groups such as MSF and the
British Red Cross was essential. It called for “calm
and serenity to enable our partners to support us
to eradicate this epidemic” and added: “Only the
recognition of the existence of the disease can help in
the fight against it.”
There is no cure for Ebola, which causes fever
and severe bleeding. Aid workers have described
the outbreak in West Africa as an “unprecedented
epidemic”.
Trust in the authorities in Conakry reached a
low ebb on Friday, with many residents blaming the
government for not immediately quarantining an
individual who was said to have carried the virus to the
capital from the remote and heavily-forested south,
where the bulk of the cases are concentrated. Sixteen
cases have been reported in Conakry, of which
five people have died, a World Health Organisation
spokesman said.
“How can we trust them now? We have to look
after ourselves,” Dede Diallo, a Conakry resident who
stopped working and has kept her children at home
since the outbreak, told the Associated Press.
Dr Adinoyi Ben Adeiza, from the International
Federation of the Red Cross, was part of the team
tasked with tackling Ebola when it broke out in
Uganda in 2012. Dr Adeiza told The Independent on
Sunday: “The only thing that can be done is to prevent
it spreading.”
He added: “This is a major challenge for
countries such as Guinea which have weak health
systems, mainly because [they don’t have] adequate
resources... to set up isolation centres for affected
people.”
In London, the Foreign Office warned Britons
travelling to Guinea to maintain strict standards of
hygiene and avoid eating bushmeat.
Available at: <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ africa/panic-as-deadly-ebola-virus-spreads-across-west- -africa-9241155.html>. Retrieved on: 20 July 2014. Adapted.
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