Sierra Leone Set to Begin 3-Day Lockdown to Curb Ebola
Sierra Leone authorities have called on the country’s 6 million inhabitants to stay in their homes for three days beginning Friday to curb the spreading Ebola virus.
The de-facto curfew is set to start a day after the United Nations Security Council called the Ebola outbreak a threat to international peace and security Thursday.
As part of the three-day lockdown, officials plan to go house to house searching for infected people in hiding, according to multiple news reports.
Doctors Without Borders, an international aid group, has criticized the tactic, noting that the shutdown could scare the diseased, worsening the outbreak by driving the infected to continue to hide. It could also erode trust built between doctors and the public.
Tensions are high as health workers try to educate people in affected countries about Ebola, but some fear that the people there to help are actually bringing the disease. The concern has prompted panic and barrages against health workers.
In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, a sign reading ‘Kill Ebola Before Ebola Kill You’, on a gate forming part of the country’s Ebola awareness campaign in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Image: Michael Duff)/Associated Press
An Ebola education team was attacked and eight bodies, including three journalists, were found in a village latrine with their throats slit, a government spokesman in Guinea said Thursday, according to Reuters.
The disease, which has also touched Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal, is believed to have sickened more than 5,300 people and killed more than 2,600 of them, the U.N.’s World Health Organization reported. In a sign the crisis is picking up steam, more than 700 of those infections were recorded in the last week for which data is available.
In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, a man dries his hands after washing them with chlorine outside a shop in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Image: Michael Duff/Associated Press
During the Sierra Leone lockdown, volunteers going door-to-door are also expected to hand out 1.5 million bars of soap and dispense information on how to prevent Ebola.
Authorities have said they expect to discover hundreds of new cases during the shutdown. Many of those infected have not sought treatment out of fear that hospitals are merely places people go to die. Others have been turned away by centers overwhelmed with patients.
“Today the life of every one is at stake, but we will get over this difficulty if all do what we have been asked to do.” Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma said in an address late Thursday.
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Additional reporting by The Associated Press