Ebola
spreads to last healthy district in Sierra Leone
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[October 17, 2014]
By Umaru Fofana
FREETOWN (Reuters) - Ebola has killed at
least two people in what was the last remaining district in Sierra Leone
unaffected by the virus, a government health officer said on Thursday.
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Sierra Leone is one of three West African nations at the epicenter
of the worst outbreak of the disease on record which has killed
close to 4,500 people since first appearing in the Guinean forest
last December.
As Ebola spread across the rest of Sierra Leone, locals in the far
northern Koinadugu district had tried to block movement in and out
of the area to stop anyone bringing in the hemorrhagic fever.
However, disease surveillance officer Abdul K. Sesay said two of six
samples taken from the village of Fankoya, where suspicious deaths
had been recorded, tested positive on Wednesday.
"We have tightened surveillance around the area and are
investigating ... how the two confirmed cases might have contracted
the disease," said Sesay.
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Local and international health authorities are scrambling teams and
supplies to help West African nations but, as of now, there are no
Ebola treatment centers in Sierra Leone's north.
"On Friday we will burn the house in which the two confirmed cases
lived, and the two houses nearby to it," said District Task Force
representative Momoh Konteh.
He said the bodies of any future Ebola victims in the region would
be cremated to contain the outbreak, regardless of the customs of
the majority Muslim population.
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In a rare piece of good news, Liberia's chief medical officer and
deputy health minister Bernice Dahn ender her 21-day Ebola
quarantine without signs of infection, officials said.
Dahn placed herself in isolation as a precaution after one of her
assistants died of the disease.
The U.S. Agency for International Development's administrator Rajiv
Shah met with Guinean President Alpha Conde late on Wednesday and
pledged to help build a new diagnostic and treatment center in
Guinea, the presidency said.
(Reporting by Umaru Fofana; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by David
Lewis/Ruth Pitchford)
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