Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Policemen wearing protective masks arrive in front of the employment
centre in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district on August 19, 2014, where a
woman who showed symptoms consistent with the deadly Ebola disease
received medical treatment. PHOTO | AFP |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
In Summary
- The epidemic, which has hit four west African nations since it broke out in Guinea at the start of the year, is by far the deadliest since Ebola was discovered four decades ago in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The head of
the Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams, said of the
29 patients in the raided unit “all had tested positive for Ebola” and
were receiving preliminary treatment before being taken to hospital.
The Ebola virus killed 84 people in just
three days, bringing the global death toll to 1,229, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) said Tuesday.
The death toll, which passed the 1,000-mark over a week ago, soared higher from last Thursday to Saturday.
The
number of confirmed infections jumped by 113 over the three days,
bringing the total number of cases to 2,240, the UN health agency said.
The
epidemic, which has hit four west African nations since it broke out in
Guinea at the start of the year, is by far the deadliest since Ebola
was discovered four decades ago in what is now the Democratic Republic
of Congo.
Sierra Leone recorded 38 new infections and 17 fatalities, the new WHO data showed.
As a result, Sierra Leone’s total case count increased to 848 and its death toll to 365.
Guinea counted 24 new cases and 14 new deaths.
That lifted the total number of cases to 543, with 394 deaths.
All told, Nigeria has now seen 15 cases and four fatalities, the data show.
Meanwhile,
Liberia was desperately searching for 17 Ebola patients who fled an
attack on a quarantine centre in the capital Monrovia, as the outbreak
appeared to overwhelm authorities in west Africa’s worst-hit nation.
Searches of the teeming West Point slum have so far failed to turn up
any of the missing victims as neighbouring Guinea said a wave of sick
Liberians had begun crossing the border, which it had officially closed
10 days ago.
EBOLA MEDICAL FACILITY RAIDED
Club-wielding
youths raided a medical facility set up in a high school in the
dense-populated Monrovia slum on Saturday, some shouting “there’s no
Ebola”, echoing wild rumours that the epidemic had been made up by the
West.
Officials are considering sealing off the area —
home to 75,000 people — to stop the nightmare scenario of people with
the highly contagious disease wandering the city where unburied corpses
have lain abandoned in the streets.
Mr Wilmont
Johnson, head of a youth association in West Point which organised a
search for the patients, told journalists Monday that “those who saw
them passing told us that they have gone into other communities”.
The
head of the Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams,
said of the 29 patients in the raided unit “all had tested positive for
Ebola” and were receiving preliminary treatment before being taken to
hospital.
Mr Fallah Boima, whose son Michel was among
the patients who fled, told AFP: “I am afraid that he could die
somewhere and I will not know.”
Outside the capital
in Caldwell, relatives of the dead criticised the government for the
slowness of its response, claiming that bodies were being left
uncollected there for days. Sheikh Idrissa Swaray, the father of one
victim, slammed the way the government was handling the crisis as
“completely wrong”.
He said in one case a man had died and his wife, possibly infected herself, had run away.
“We don’t even know where the wife has gone and the body is still here.
Three days now and the body has not been taken.”
Dr
Sakoba Keita, who is heading Guinea’s fight against the epidemic, told
AFP that a wave of sick Liberians were crossing the border in the
Macenta district in the south of country. http://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Ebola-kills-84-in-three-day--Liberia-hunt/-/1066/2424598/-/glb9gi/-/index.html
