The difficulties of fighting Ebola in poor and strife torn West Africa have been underlined over night when a Liberian quarantine centre was raided by locals who stole supplies and liberated patients:
Liberian officials said Sunday that they feared Ebola could soon spread through the capital’s largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for people with suspected infections, freeing patients and stealing items that include bloodstain sheets and mattresses.
The raid in the West Point slum of Monrovia occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought from other parts of the capital to the holding center, said Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister. It was not immediately clear how many patients had been at the center.
West Point residents went on a “looting spree,” stealing items from the clinic that were likely infected, said a senior police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. The residents took mattresses, sheets and blankets that had bloodstains, which could spread the deadly virus.
According to Agence France-Presse, at least 17 patients infected with Ebola were unaccounted for after the raid.
The AFP’s report also indicated that the men who had broken into the center believe the Ebola outbreak is a fiction.
Meanwhile, Spain has quarantined and then cleared another possible case and India is testing four people recently returned from West Africa. South Africa also has one suspected case. Kenya and Cameroon have closed their borders to affected nations:
The Kenyan government over the weekend said it will bar passengers traveling from three West African countries hit by the Ebola outbreak, closing a debate in East Africa’s economic powerhouse about whether the national airline was exposing the country to the deadly disease.
The suspension is effective midnight Tuesday for all ports of entry for people traveling from or through Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, said Kenya’s Health Ministry. Nigeria was not included in the ban, which also allows entry to health professionals and Kenyans returning from those countries.
“This step is in line with the recognition of the extraordinary measures urgently required to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa,” the Health Ministry said. It cited the World Health Organization’s recent statement that the magnitude of the Ebola outbreak has been underestimated.
Officials in Cameroon, which borders Nigeria, announced Friday it would suspend all flights from all four Ebola-affected countries.
…The World Health Organization has denounced the travel bans.
A cordon sanitaire is slowly forming. Here is the latest chart:
