Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital’s largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for Ebola patients awaiting treatment and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses. The violence, which is only the latest in a string of attacks on health care facilities in the Ebola-affected region, was led by residents of the West Point slum, who are angry that infected patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of the city.
Local witnesses told Agence France Presse that there were armed men among the group that attacked the clinic. “They broke down the doors and looted the place. The patients all fled,” said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack and whose report was confirmed by residents and the head of Health Workers Association of Liberian, George Williams.
According to Williams, the clinic housed 29 patients who had all tested positive for the deadly virus. The patients, who were receiving preliminary treatment at the West Point unit while awaiting transfer to a hospital, fled at the time of the attack. The latest reports indicate that 17 patients with the virus are still unaccounted for.
The attack comes just one day after a report that a crowd of several hundred local residents, chanting, ‘No Ebola in West Point,’ drove away a burial team and their police escort, forcing them to abandon the bodies of the suspected Ebola victims.
A senior police official told the Associated Press that the angry group of West Point residents went on a “looting spree” after breaking into the clinic on Saturday. Included among the items they carried out of the treatment center were medical supplies and bloodied sheets and mattresses that were likely infected with the virus. Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids such as blood, urine, feces, vomit, and sweat.
A crowd enters the grounds of an Ebola isolation center in the West Point slum in Monrovia, Liberia, before a group of armed men attacked the facility (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
“All between the houses you could see people fleeing with items looted from the patients,” the official told AP, adding that he now feared “the whole of West Point will be infected.”
Located within Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia, West Point is an informal community, a “slum,” with no running water or toilets. At least 60,000-100,000 people live in the cramped neighborhood, where they share just four public toilets that cost 2.5 US cents to use. People can live seven or more to a single dwelling, and the density is dangerous: A positive Ebola patient disappearing into the maze of metal shacks can be a public health horror story. But seventeen of them? An absolute nightmare.
Beyond the crowded, unsanitary conditions, officials fear that widespread distrust of government among West Point residents will further complicate efforts to locate the missing patients and identify those who they came into contact with. Furthermore, many residents believe that the Ebola virus is a hoax and, as such, have failed to heed the warnings about preventing infection.
Above, a man flees the West Point treatment center carrying a child infected with the deadly virus.
The mistrust of central government and help from outside runs deep in this part of West Africa. All three countries worst-hit by the outbreak — Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea — are relatively fresh off decades of either brutal civil war or iron-fisted dictatorships.
While this weekend’s armed attack is likely the most brazen attack on health workers trying to contain the deadly outbreak, it is far from the first in the region worst-hit by it.
There have been numerous reports of locals attacking those trying to stop the disease by throwing stones at aid workers, blocking aid convoys and forcibly removing patients from clinics. Many locals blame foreigners for bringing the disease, saying it had never been there before they arrived.
Despite efforts to increase awareness and educate the public about preventing the spread of Ebola, fears and misinformation run rampant in West Point, where many believe that the Ebola virus is a hoax.
The medical humanitarian group Samaritans Purse experienced similar resistance in the Monrovia community when they tried to expand the treatment and containment center at the ELWA hospital facility, forcing the group to abandon their plans to widen the scope of their work in the area.
The Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 1,145 people and infected at least 2,127 in West Africa could last another six months, the Doctors Without Borders charity group said Friday. One aid worker acknowledged that the true death toll is still unknown, and the WHO reported this week that the outbreak has been “vastly underestimated.”
New figures released by the World Health Organization showed that Liberia has recorded more Ebola deaths – 413 – than any of the other affected countries.
Officials working with local aid groups say response teams simply aren’t able to document all the erupting Ebola cases. Many of the sick are still being hidden at home by their relatives, who are too fearful of going to an Ebola treatment center. Others are buried before officials can reach the remote locations.
Women outside of the West Point clinic plead for their family members inside to come home with them. After Saturday’s attack, 17 Ebola patients are still unaccounted for.
With the recent surge of cases, beds in treatment facilities are filling up faster than they can be provided. At one clinic in a quarantined county of Liberia, 137 people are packed into a facility equipped with only 40 beds, said the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, which runs the clinic. In a similar situation at a treatment center in Monrovia, 80 people are crowded into a ward meant to accommodate just 25 people.
“It’s absolutely dangerous,” said Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Border. “With the massive influx of patients that we had over the last few days, we’re not able to keep zones of patients anymore. Everybody is mixed.”
Liu said the situation is like a state of war because the “frontline” is always moving and unpredictable. The WHO recently announced that the outbreak could last at least six more months.
There are an increasingly high number of airline cancellations, and the United Nations plans to start releasing flights specifically for humanitarian workers on Saturday in order to keep distributing help. As many as one million people in isolated areas may need food assistance in the coming months. The UN also plans to transport helpers to remote areas via helicopter.
“We need specialized clinicians and expertise, and that is why we are appealing to the international community for an enhanced response to our fight” against Ebola, Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma said.