|
 From Guinea, where the four-month-old outbreak claimed the first of
more than 500 lives, to Sierra Leone, scores of patients are hiding
away, believing hospitalization is a "death sentence".
In Guinea's southeastern Forest Region some terrified villagers are
shutting off their communities to medical workers, even blocking
roads and downing bridges.
Over the border in Liberia's Lofa County, health workers trying to
screen two communities for the deadly disease were chased off by
locals armed with cutlasses, knives, and stones, according to an
internal U.N. report seen by Reuters.
In eastern Sierra Leone, police had to fire tear gas to stop
relatives trying to recover bodies of Ebola victims for family
burial - a serious contagion risk - amid popular suspicions the
cadavers might be used for experiments or macabre rituals.
"We are seeing a lot of mistrust, intimidation and hostility from
part of the population," Marc Poncin, emergency coordinator for
medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Guinea, told
Reuters.
The MSF treatment center at Gueckedou, 650 kilometers (400 miles)
southeast of Conakry, was monitoring only one suspected case. Two
weeks ago it had been treating around 25 Ebola patients.
But this was not, Poncin warned, because the disease was waning, but
because he believed "dozens" of suspected cases were hiding out from
medical teams in the surrounding forest region.
"What we are now seeing are villages closing themselves off, not
allowing us to enter, sick people hidden in the community. They
don't come and seek healthcare any more," he said.
This was increasing the risk of further propagation, adding to the
challenge for medical authorities of an unprecedented epidemic
spread across three nations that threatens one of the poorest
regions of the world. Weak local health systems and porous national
borders were magnifying the infection risk.
The World Health Organization reported on Friday a total of 888
Ebola cases including 539 deaths since February, saying the epidemic
had surged in Liberia and Sierra Leone and calling the situation
"precarious".
To handle the increased Sierra Leone cases, MSF was doubling the
number of beds at its treatment center in Kailahun. It warned it was
racing against time to stop the spread of the disease and feared it
was just seeing "the tip of the iceberg".
West African governments who met under WHO auspices earlier this
month agreed a coordinated regional strategy but experts say more is
needed in terms of effort, cooperation and funds.
"If we are to break the chain of Ebola transmission, it is crucial
to combat the fear surrounding it and earn the trust of
communities," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for
West and Central Africa.
"We have to knock on every door, visit every market and spread the
word in every church and every mosque," he added.
"More people, more funds, more partners" were urgently needed, the
U.N. children's agency said.
"LIKE A DEATH SENTENCE"
Ebola causes fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea and was first
detected in then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, in the
mid-1970s. Spread through contact with blood and body fluids of
infected people or animals, it is one of the world's deadliest
viruses, killing up to 90 percent of those infected.
Effective treatment needs cooperation from local communities to
allow screening and contact-tracing of suspected cases, and then
their isolation in properly equipped treatment centers.
But Poncin said people in Gueckedou were now shunning the center
there, where only 2 in 10 infected patients survived the disease.
"People see people arrive more or less OK and then they die there.
So they start to mistrust the treatment center," he said.
It was a similar story in Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone. "They
think if you go to the hospital, you will die, like Ebola is a death
sentence," said Red Cross worker Augusta Boima.
[to top of second column] |
In contrast, at a treatment center in Telimele in north Guinea,
where more trusting patients had come forward earlier, the recovery
rate was higher, over 75 percent, Poncin said.
At roads in and out of Kenema, a still bustling trading town, police
and health authorities have set up checkpoints, questioning
travelers and checking temperatures for fever.
"People say after they check you they will take you to the hospital
and you will not come out again. So this is why so many people are
afraid, why they will not come here," a fish trader at the
checkpoint, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
He complained his fish trade was "very bad", because people were
avoiding coming to town, fearful of screening.
Across the three affected countries, 'outreach' teams are explaining
the risks of Ebola and the need for treatment.
But they are often not welcome.
At one village in Guinea's forested Gueckedou prefecture, locals
even dismantled a bridge to block health workers' vehicles, Poncin
said, On another occasion, an MSF car was surrounded by threatening
youths who came out of the forest.
In Liberia's Lofa County, health workers who visited two
communities, Bolongoidu and Sarkonnedu in Voinjama district, were
intercepted by village elders and a mob of angry residents.
"They said the villagers were not interested in messages on Ebola
because as far as they were concerned Ebola does not exist and that
they should leave immediately or they would be beaten up," was how
the incident was reported back to the U.N. mission.
"BODIES IN BAGS"
Poncin said that in Guinea's southeastern forest region, where
age-old animist beliefs exist side-by-side with imported
Christianity, many locals shunned the modern world and its medicine,
preferring instead to rely on traditional healers.
This had led to some associating Ebola with witchcraft and sorcery,
or branding it an evil brought in by foreigners.
Because of contagion risk, authorities say the cadavers of Ebola
victims must be disposed of securely. But families in West Africa,
where the washing of the deceased by family members is part of
traditional burials, often struggle to understand this.
"For us to now have to give our beloved dead relatives away to
people who will wrap them in a plastic bag and dump them in a grave
without us washing and honoring them is hard to stomach," a
traditional Sierra Leone leader said, asking not to be named.
This incomprehension can tap into deeper fears, still common in West
Africa, of body parts being used for ritual or magic.
"Putting people in body bags creates a lot of suspicion in the minds
of people; they think parts of the body are being cut, and that's
why the body is not being allowed to be displayed," said Kenema
health officer Sheku Bockarie.
While daily life goes on in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, whose
people have suffered years of conflict, poverty and disease, the
Ebola fears are affecting some social habits.
"We have decided to ask our children to not play with any other
child because we do not know who is the carrier. Also, I do not
shake hands. I only speak and wave," said Liberian mother Marie Wleh
in Logan Town, Monrovia.
(Additional reporting by Alphonso Toweh in Monrovia, Umaru Fofana in
Kenema, Sierra Leone, Misha Hussain in Dakar and Pascal Fletcher in
Johannesburg; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Will Waterman)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
