Ebola-hit Sierra Leone’s Freetown a city on edge FREETOWN: Death stalks the rain-lashed streets of Sierra Leone’s capital, finally at peace after a decade of civil war but in the grip of a new and equally deadly adversarythe Ebola virus. Freetown may have been spared the brunt of an epidemic cutting a swathe through West Africa, but the tropical fever is the only topic of conversation in a city festooned with incongruously vibrant banners reminding people of the ever-present threat. “We are all scared because of the way Ebola is spreading but we are taking all the necessary precautions,” says Waisu Gassama, 27, who works in the HIV department of the dilapidated, century-old Connaught Hospital. Gassama tells AFP the unit has stopped testing patients for HIV, such is the fear over the possibility that blood samples might contain Ebola. Outside the hospital, soldiers say they have been drafted in to guard doctors and nurses, many of whom have been targeted by angry mobs blaming modern medicine for exacerbating the epidemic. Freetown, a sprawling tropical city of 1.2 million people, on the Atlantic coastline of one of the world’s poorest countries, is a day’s drive from the epicentre of the most deadly outbreak of Ebola in history. It is little wonder that the highly-contagious pathogen can propagate panic quicker than it spreads death. Ebola is classified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Protection as a category A bioterrorism agent, along with anthrax, botulism and smallpox. There is no cure, no established drug therapy and no vaccine to protect victims against the lethal haemorrhagic fever which the virus causes, breaking down vital organs until they seep out of the host’s lungs, skin and eyes. Ebola has killed 1,013 people in the current outbreak, more than half of those it has infected, spreading from southern Guinea to Liberia, Sierra Leone and then Nigeria. ‘Everyone is afraid’ Because the virus is so hazardous, it requires treatment and research facilities with the highest levels of containment and highly trained personnel resources which one of the world’s poorest regions does not have in abundance. The indigenous tribal villages of Sierra Leone’s densely forested eastern region bordering Liberia and Guinea have seen most of the country’s deaths. Less than 300 kilometers (180 miles) away, Freetown is a city on edge, if not outright panic. —AFP
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:43:43 +0000
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