Ebola crisis: Liberia confirms West Point patients missing as Cameroon closes land, sea and air travels from Nigeria

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

A man carries out a girl from an Ebola isolation centre as a mob overruns the facility in the West Point slum on August 16, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia.

This man carried a young girl out of the West Point health facility on Saturday

Following earlier denials, Liberia has admitted that 17 suspected Ebola patients are “missing” after a health centre in the capital was looted.

The government had sought to reassure people, saying all the patients had been moved to another health facility.

But Information Minister Lewis Brown told the BBC that 17 inmates had gone “back into their communities”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for exit screenings on all travellers from affected countries.

It wants checks at airports, sea ports and major land crossings.

Several airlines have already stopped flying to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – the countries worst affected by the world’s most deadly outbreak of Ebola, which has no known cure.

Cameroon has closed its land, sea and air borders with Nigeria, which also has several cases of Ebola, reports said.

The virus has killed 1,145 people this year, the World Health Organization says.

Liberian Police dressed in riot gear deploy at a MSF, "Doctors Without Borders", Ebola treatment center as they provide security in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Monday, Aug. 18, 2014.

Security has been stepped up at health centres treating Ebola patients in Liberia

Meanwhile, the UN’s chief co-ordinator in Sierra Leone, David McLachlan-Karr, told the BBC that Ebola had spread to 12 out of 13 of the country’s districts.

“While Sierra Leone was the last affected of the three Mano River countries to have confirmed [cases] of Ebola, now it’s the country with the most cases,” he said.

There have been at least 810 cases of Ebola reported in Sierra Leone, including 348 deaths, according to WHO figures.

‘Greatest setback’

In Liberia, Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said protesters in the West Point district attacked a quarantine centre on Saturday because they were unhappy that patients were being taken there from other parts of the capital, Monrovia.

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

Mr Nyenswah had said that all the suspected patients had been transferred to an Ebola treatment centre in the John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia.

But on Monday, the information minister said 17 of the 37 patients were unaccounted for.

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He said the authorities were now trying to track them down but said he was confident they would return.

“Most of the people that went into this holding facility came there voluntarily,” he told the BBC.

“So our impression is that they still want to be [there], but they were forcibly removed by vandals and looters, not because they wanted to leave; so we are sure that they will return.”

He said the attack on the quarantine centre was Liberia’s “greatest setback” since the Ebola outbreak began.

-BBCwp_posts