17 Ebola victims escape from quarantine in Liberia

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Headlines Monday, August 18th, 2014

There are conflicting reports over the fate of 17 suspected Ebola patients who vanished after a quarantine centre in the Liberian capital was looted.

An angry mob attacked the centre in Monrovia’s densely populated West Point township on Saturday evening.

A senior health official said all of the patients had been moved to another medical facility.

But a reporter told the BBC that 17 had escaped while 10 others were taken away by their families.

More than 400 people are known to have died from the virus in Liberia, out of a total of 1,145 deaths recorded by the World Health Organization.

People watch police depart after driving out an Ebola burial team who had come to collect the bodies of four people who had died overnight in the West Point slum on August 16

Police fired warning shots but failed to disperse several hundred people around the Ebola centre

Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said protesters had been unhappy that patients were being brought in from other parts of the capital.

Other reports suggested the protesters had believed Ebola was a hoax and wanted to force the quarantine centre to close.

The attack at the Monrovia centre is seen as a major setback in the struggle to halt the outbreak, says the BBC’s Will Ross, reporting from Lagos.

Health experts say that the key to ending the Ebola outbreak is to stop it spreading in Liberia, where ignorance about the virus is high and many people are reluctant to cooperate with medical staff.

Mr Nyenswah said after the attack that 29 patients at the centre were being relocated and readmitted to an Ebola treatment centre located in the facility of the country’s John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center.

However, Jina Moore, a journalist for Buzzfeed who is in Monrovia, told the BBC that 10 people had been freed by their relatives on Friday night and 17 had escaped during the looting the next day.

Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack, told the AFP news agency: “They broke down the door and looted the place. The patients have all gone.”

A crowd enters the grounds of an Ebola isolation center in the West Point slum on August 16

The crowd were reportedly angry that an Ebola isolation centre had been set up in their neighbourhood

The attackers, mostly young men armed with clubs, shouted insults about President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and yelled “there’s no Ebola”, she said, adding that nurses had also fled the centre.

The head of the Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams, said the unit had housed 29 patients who “had all tested positive for Ebola” and were receiving preliminary treatment.

Confirming that 17 had escaped, he said that only three had been taken by their relatives, the other nine having died four days earlier.

However, Mr Nyenswah said it was not confirmed that the patients had Ebola.

Fallah Boima’s son was admitted to the ward four days ago, and seemed to be doing well, but when the distraught father arrived for his daily visit on Sunday his son was nowhere to be seen, AFP adds.

“I don’t know where he is and I am very confused,” he said. “He has not called me since he left the camp. Now that the nurses have all left, how will I know where my son is?”

Ebola is spread by contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids, such as sweat and blood, and no cure or vaccine is currently available.

Blood-stained mattresses, bedding and medical equipment were taken from the centre, a senior police officer told BBC News, on condition of anonymity
-Sunwp_posts