[LINK] "As Ebola Crisis Spreads in West Africa, Liberia's Deterioration Stands Out"

[rfmcdonald]

National Geographic's Dick Thompson writes about the situation in Liberia, where the ongoing West African Ebola epidemic is apparently particularly intense.

The massive effort to get control of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the most devastating in history with more than 1,350 dead to date, has taken some bizarre turns in Liberia. The country's government on Tuesday quarantined a slum in Monrovia, the capital, provoking clashes there between angry residents and authorities.

The country's public health officials had already been reduced to rounding up patients that angry mobs "liberated" from an isolation facility last weekend, imposing a nationwide curfew of 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., and fighting the pernicious rumor that the hemorrhagic fever still raging through West Africa is a hoax.

The situation in Liberia has been described by an experienced member of one response team as being in "free fall," while Doctors Without Borders said the situation in Monrovia is "catastrophic." Liberia now has more cases and more deaths than any other country, with 576 patients dead, compared to 396 in Guinea and 374 in Sierra Leone. Dozens of health care workers in the country have been infected with the virus.

The deadly Ebola virus has been leaving its mark on Africa since the first outbreak in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A total of 2,473 cases and 1,350 deaths have been recorded in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria since the World Health Organization began reporting Ebola cases in March 2014. Several countries have imposed bans on airline travel.

Doctors Without Borders says there are reports that most of the country's hospitals are closed because fearful or ill health workers stopped reporting to work, and bodies are lying in the streets and in houses waiting to be collected.