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 The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed 6,533 people in the
three West African countries most hit by the disease -- Sierra
Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- and infected 18,118 people, the World
Health Organization said on Thursday
Sierra Leone, with a shortage of treatment centers and trained
staff, has overtaken Liberia as the worst affected nation, and until
now, the recent spread was believed to be centered on western areas
around the capital Freetown.
However, the WHO said on Wednesday that it had found bodies piled up
at the only hospital in Kono, a district of about 350,000 people
bordering Guinea.
Officials from the WHO, health ministry and U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered 87 bodies had been buried in
11 days.
Kono District Ebola Response Center said it was placing the area on
lockdown, allowing only essential vehicles in and out and
introducing a night-time curfew.
Sierra Leone's government said on Wednesday it was working with the
United Nations in Kono and the International Federation of the Red
Cross was setting up a treatment center there. The remote area has
only one ambulance to transport the sick and blood samples for
testing.
But in Liberia, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said
it was withdrawing from northern Lofa County, a former Ebola
hotspot, after no new patients were recorded at its treatment center
in Foya since Oct. 30, allowing the center's staff to be redeployed.
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Ettore Mazzanti, MSF Project Coordinator in Foya, said efforts to
contain the outbreak had been helped by explaining to local people
how to avoid the virus, which has no known cure and is transmitted
through the bodily fluids of sick people.
Scientists are racing to develop Ebola vaccines.
The Ebola response in Sierra Leone has been dogged by strikes by
healthcare staff over pay and working conditions.
Despite government claims that it had reached a deal with junior
doctors, Dr Jeredine George, president of the Junior Doctors'
Association, told Reuters that its members would strike for a fourth
day on Thursday.
They are demanding a specialized Ebola treatment clinic for Sierra
Leonean doctors, 10 of whom have died since the outbreak began.
Deputy Health Minister Madinatu Rahman has said plans are underway
to get such a clinic set up this month.
(Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Crispian Balmer)
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