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70 bodies found in Sierra Leone 3-day shutdown
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SIERRA Leone ended its three-day shutdown yesterday, with authorities saying the action aimed at containing the Ebola epidemic had uncovered up to 70 dead bodies in and around the capital.
Most of the west African country’s 6 million people were confined to their homes for a third straight day, with only essential workers such as health professionals and security forces exempt.
Almost 30,000 volunteers have been going door-to-door to educate residents and hand out soap in an exercise that was expected to lead to scores more patients and bodies being discovered in homes.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Sarian Kamara revealed that the authorities had received thousands of calls but only a handful of new patients in the Western Area covering Freetown and its surroundings.
“We were ... able to confirm new cases which, had they not been discovered, would have greatly increased transmission,” she said.
“Up to this morning, we had 22 new cases. The response from the medical teams has improved and the burial teams were able to bury between 60 to 70 corpses over the past two days.”
Independent observers have voiced concern over the quality of advice, deeming the shutdown a “mixed success” and complaining about the poor training of the door-to-door education teams.
Meanwhile, aid organizations and medical experts have questioned the feasibility of reaching 1.5 million homes in three days and argue that confining people to their homes could erode trust in the government.
Joe Amon, health and human rights director at New York-based advocacy organisation Human Rights Watch, described the shutdown as “more of a publicity stunt than a health intervention.”
Kamara said, however, that the shutdown was “on track” in its objective to tell the entire population how to prevent Ebola spreading.
“There has been a total compliance to the order for people to stay at home ... which made it possible for campaign teams throughout the country to reach families in their own homes to sensitize them about Ebola,” she said.
Ebola fever can fell its victims within days, causing severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhea and — in some cases — unstoppable bleeding.
The outbreak has killed more than 2,600 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone this year, cutting a swathe through entire villages at the epicenter and prompting warnings over possible economic catastrophe.
The widespread fallout from the outbreak was underlined by India’s decision on Saturday to postpone plans for a summit in New Delhi to be attended by representatives of more than 50 African nations.
The spread of the virus made it “logistically difficult” to manage the Third India-Africa Forum Summit, a foreign ministry official said.
In Liberia, the hardest-hit country with more than 1,450 dead, health officials said action to halt the spread of the disease was being hampered by traditional communities still ignoring advice on staying away from highly infectious dead bodies.
“Some people are still in denial. Because of that they are not listening to the rules,” said health official Gabriel Gorbee Logana.
He said people were still bathing dead bodies because tradition demands.
“Religion demands that they need to bathe these dead bodies before calling the health team, and by the time we get there, a couple of people have come into contact.”
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