Sierra Leone: High level of alert against Ebola

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Medical workers are on high alert against Ebola, in Sierra Leone, as the death toll continues to rise. Don Dante Carraro, Director of the NGO Doctors with Africa CUAMM, who has just returned from a visit to the country, gave a harrowing report of conditions there. He said: "I arrived in Freetown, where besides checking your passport and entry permit they also check whether you have a fever. They do this with a sort of 'laser gun' aimed at the temple."

Dr Carraro visited Pujehun, a rural district in the south of the country, which has a population of more than 300,000 people. He said: "In the compound of the hospital there is the District Health Management Team. So far there have been nine deaths from Ebola, almost all from Zimmi, a town across the river Moe. Although it is not officially in quarantine, in practice the town is closed, the population is not allowed to move from one place to another and it is impossible to reach the area by road. There is desperate need of food".

"In Pujehun there is a lack of boots, coveralls, goggles, masks, chlorine; training of personnel, contact tracers, isolation units with running water and electricity and even burial teams."

Dr Carraro said: "We then moved to the hospital in Kenema, in the district next to ours, the heart of the epidemic. We entered the building which was completely empty except patients with Ebola. It is a concentration camp: guards in white coveralls, strict rules, checkpoints everywhere. People were afraid and we were too! Is seems you are in front of an invisible, impalpable, yet monstrous and deadly 'beast'. So far, in Kenema alone, there have been 158 deaths, of whom 27 doctors and nurses. In the last three days, four laboratory technicians have lost their lives".

He said: "We ended the day by accompanying the pick-up of the hospital up to a field used as a cemetery: three more bodies were buried. On the last day we were in Zimmi, a town of 10,000 people. The inhabitants are abandoned because there is no isolation unit, and buried after death in a mass grave. We then visited the school where there are 46 mothers, children and some male adults, quarantined, isolated from the community, because there is fear that the infection may spread".

Source: Fides