[READ & SHARE] Last Ebola-free region of Liberia falls to virus Via @iKanzee_RR

MONROVIA (AFP) – Every region of Liberia has
now been hit by Ebola, officials said Friday, as
the World Health Organization warned the
fight against the worst-ever outbreak of the
killer disease would take months.
After seeing people fall to the deadly virus in
area after area, Liberia said two people had
succumbed to the virus in Sinoe province, the
last Ebola-free bastion in a country that has
seen the biggest toll with 624 deaths.
The virus has spread relentlessly through
Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and Nigeria
has also been affected despite showing some
progress in fighting the epidemic, which has
killed 1,427 people since March.
“(Sinoe) was the last area untouched by
Ebola,” George Williams, head of the Health
Workers Association of Liberia, told AFP.
The country has witnessed chaotic scenes in
recent days following a surge in the number of
patients dying of the hemorrhagic fever.
Aid workers said crematoriums in the capital
of Monrovia were struggling to deal with
bodies arriving every day, and earlier this
week, violence erupted in an Ebola quarantine
zone in the capital after soldiers opened fire
on protesting crowds.
In a bid to ease the crisis, medical charity
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is working on
nearly quadrupling the capacity of its Ebola
centre in Monrovia.
“Currently we have around 60 patients for a
capacity of 120 beds,” said Henry Gray, an
MSF coordinator.
“And we are making our site bigger. In the
next 10 days, we hope to have a location that
can welcome up to 400 patients.”
In neighbouring Nigeria, officials said Friday
that two more people had tested positive for
Ebola, taking the total number of confirmed
cases to 14, including five deaths.
- Flare up -
In a news conference in Monrovia, WHO
Assistant Director-General Dr Keiji Fukuda on
Friday warned efforts to combat the disease
would take some time.
“This is not something to turn around
overnight, it is not going to be easy; we
expect several months of hard work. We
expect several months really struggling with
this outbreak,” he said at a press conference
alongside Dr David Nabarro.
Nabarro, a physician appointed by the United
Nations last week to coordinate the global
response to the worst-ever outbreak of the
disease, was in Monrovia as part of a tour of
the region.
Speaking to AFP, he said he was determined
to “ensure that every piece of our apparatus is
at its optimum so it could deal possibly with
a flare-up if that’s necessary”.
Nabarro is also due to visit Freetown, Conakry
and Abuja during the trip, where he is tasked
with revitalising the health sectors of affected
countries.
No cure or vaccine is currently available for
the deadly virus, which is spread by close
contact with body fluids, meaning patients
must be isolated.
However, two American missionaries who
contracted Ebola while treating patients in
Liberia made a full recovery in the United
States. The two were treated with experimental
drugs.
- ‘They may die’ -
The failure of west African countries to bring
the epidemic under control has worried its
neighbours and nations further afield.
Senegal on Thursday closed its land border
with Guinea, where 396 people have died to
date, in an attempt to stop the epidemic
reaching it.
Gabon, meanwhile, suspended flights and
maritime links from affected countries, and
said it would deliver visas to travellers coming
from the Ebola zone “on a case-by-case
basis”.
In a further, urgent effort to contain the
epidemic, Sierra Leone’s parliament passed a
law on Friday that imposes a jail term of up
to two years for anyone concealing an Ebola-
infected patient.
Ibrahim Bundu, a senior parliamentary figure,
took the opportunity to blast some of the
country’s allies over their closures of land
borders or flight suspensions.
“We are appalled by… the isolation imposed
by those that we considered our best friends
at a sub-regional, regional and global level,”
he said.
Meanwhile, as fears grow that the outbreak
will spread across Africa, the Democratic
Republic of Congo — where Ebola was first
identified in 1976 in what was then Zaire —
said a fever of unidentified origin had killed 13
people in the country’s northwest since
August 11.
But a WHO official and MSF said Friday it was
too soon to tell whether a haemorrhagic fever
caused the deaths, and the results of swabs
are due in a week’s time.