A man suffering from Ebola was bundled into the back of an ambulance after he caused mass panic at a market in Liberia when he wandered in looking for food, yesterday. According to reports, the unidentified man walked into a market in the capital Monrovia which has been badly hit by the worst ever outbreak of the disease, only to be chased from the area by panicked shoppers. Attempting to make off with loaves of bread, the man was then chased down the road by men wearing yellow protection suits, who eventually caught him and bundled him into the back of a UNICEF vehicle. There were chaotic scenes as crowds followed infected man, who was wearing a wristband to show he had tested positive for the disease, and some stallholders argued with him as he approached. The patient escaped from Monrovia’s Elwa hospital, which last month was so crowded with cases of the deadly disease that it had to turn people away. One woman at the scene said: “The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water. The government needs to do more. Let Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (the President of Liberia) do more.” Onlookers cheered as health workers arrived in their protective outfits and try to convince the patient to give himself up. The man, who showed no outward signs of the diarrhoea and bleeding that the virus causes, refused to return with the health workers and they eventually grabbed him and carried him away to a waiting ambulance. There has been widespread panic buying, a shortage of staple foods and severe prices in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since movement restrictions were imposed to stop the spread of the virus. Scores of healthcare workers at Liberia’s main hospital have gone on strike over unpaid wages, complicating the fight against the world’s worst Ebola epidemic that the United States disease prevention chief said was spiraling out of control. The strike at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center (JFK) in Liberia’s capital Monrovia follows a one-day protest over pay and conditions at the Connaught hospital in Sierra Leone’s capital on Monday. Both hospitals have treated Ebola patients. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden said yesterday the outbreak was accelerating very fast and urged more global support to combat the Ebola outbreak. “It’s spiraling out of control. The situation is bad and it looks like it’s going to get worse quickly. There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down but that window is closing, and we need to act now,” he told NBC News in an interview following a trip to Africa. Meanwhile, international medical agency Medecins sans Frontieres said yesterday the world was “losing the battle” to contain Ebola as the United Nations warned of severe food shortages in the hardest-hit countries. MSF told a UN briefing in New York that world leaders were failing to address the epidemic and called for an urgent global biological disaster response to get aid and personnel to west Africa. “Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat,” said MSF international president Joanne Liu. “The (World Health Organization) announcement on August 8 that the epidemic constituted a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ has not led to decisive action, and states have essentially joined a global coalition of inaction.” Liu called for the international community to fund more beds for a regional network of field hospitals, dispatch trained personnel and deploy mobile laboratories across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:37:34 +0000
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