Liberia closes hospital after 7 staff members contract Ebola
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LIBERIA shut a major hospital in the capital Monrovia yesterday after a Spanish priest and six other staff contracted Ebola, as the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease hit 932 in West Africa.
The outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic fever has overwhelmed rudimentary health care systems and prompted the deployment of soldiers to quarantine the worst-hit areas in the remote border region of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The World Health Organization reported 45 new deaths in the three days to August 4, and its experts began an emergency meeting in Geneva yesterday. They were slated to discuss whether the outbreak constitutes a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” and new measures to contain the outbreak.
International alarm at the spread of the disease increased when a US citizen died in Nigeria late last month after flying there from Liberia. The health minister said yesterday that a Nigerian nurse who had treated the deceased Patrick Sawyer had herself died of Ebola, and five other people were being treated in an isolation ward in Lagos, Africa's largest city.
In Saudi Arabia, a man suspected of contracting Ebola during a recent business trip to Sierra Leone also died early yesterday in Jeddah, the Health Ministry said. Saudi Arabia has already suspended pilgrimage visas from West African countries.
Liberia, where the death toll is rising fastest, is struggling to cope. Many residents are panicking, in some cases casting out the bodies of family members onto the streets of Monrovia to avoid quarantine measures.
Beneath heavy rain, ambulance sirens wailed through the otherwise quiet streets of Monrovia as residents heeded a government request to stay at home for three days of fasting and prayers.
“Everyone is afraid of Ebola. You cannot tell who has Ebola or not. Ebola is not like a cut mark that you can see and run,” said Sarah Wehyee as she stocked up on food at a market in Paynesville, an eastern suburb of Monrovia.
St Joseph’s Catholic hospital was shut down after the Cameroonian hospital director died from Ebola, authorities said. Six staff subsequently tested positive for the disease, including two nuns and 75-year old Spanish priest Miguel Pajares.
Three of the world’s leading Ebola specialists urged the WHO to offer people in West Africa the chance to take experimental drugs, too, but the agency said it “would not recommend any drug that has not gone through the normal process of licensing and clinical trials.”
Ebola is highly contagious. It kills more than half of the people who contract it. Victims suffer from fever, vomiting, diarrhea and internal and external bleeding.
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