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 The outbreak has killed 467 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone since February, making it the largest and deadliest ever,
according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
West African health ministers meeting in Ghana to draw up a regional
response mixed appeals for cash with warnings of the practices that
have allowed the disease to spread across borders and into cities.
Abubakarr Fofanah, deputy health minister for Sierra Leone, a
country with one of the world's weakest health systems, said cash
was needed for drugs, basic protective gear and staff pay.
Sierra Leone announced on Wednesday that President Ernest Bai Koroma,
his vice president and all cabinet ministers would donate half of
their salaries to help fight the outbreak, though the total amount
of the donations was not disclosed.
"In Liberia, our biggest challenge is denial, fear and panic. Our
people are very much afraid of the disease," Bernice Dahn, Liberia's
deputy health minister, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Accra
meeting.
"People are afraid but do not believe that the disease exists and
because of that people get sick and the community members hide them
and bury them, against all the norms we have put in place," she
said.
Authorities are trying to stop relatives of Ebola victims from
giving them traditional funerals, which often involve the manual
washing of the body, out of fear of spreading the infection. The
dead are instead meant to be buried by health staff wearing
protective gear.
Neighboring Sierra Leone faces many of the same problems, with
dozens of those infected evading treatment, complicating efforts to
trace cases.
RED CROSS STAFF THREATENED
The Red Cross in Guinea said it had been forced to temporarily
suspend some operations in the country's southeast after staff
working on Ebola were threatened.
"Locals wielding knives surrounded a marked Red Cross vehicle," a
Red Cross official said, asking not to be named. The official said
operations had been halted for safety reasons. The Red Cross later
said only international staff were removed.
A Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) center in
Guinea was attacked by youths in April after staff were accused of
bringing the disease into the country.
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<For a map of the region affected by Ebola, please click on http://link.reuters.com/fyj32w>
Ebola causes fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea and kills up to
90 percent of those it infects. Highly contagious, it is transmitted
through contact with blood or other fluids.
WHO has flagged three main factors driving its spread: the burial of
victims in accordance with tradition, the dense populations around
the capital cities of Guinea and Liberia and the bustling
cross-border trade across the region.
Health experts say the top priority must be containing Ebola with
basic infection control measures such as vigilant handwashing and
hygiene, and isolation of infected patients.
Jeremy Farrar, a professor of tropical medicine and director of The
Wellcome Trust, an influential global health charity, said people at
high risk should also be offered experimental medicines, despite the
drugs not having been fully tested.
"We have more than 450 deaths so far, and not a single individual
has been offered anything beyond tepid sponging and 'we'll bury you
nicely'," Farrar told Reuters in an interview. "It's just
unacceptable."
(Additional reporting by Misha Hussain in Dakar and Umaru Fofana in
Freetown; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Joe Bavier, Toni
Reinhold)
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