By the time officials had pinpointed Pujeh as a hotspot for the disease months later, dozens had died. “The people living in these areas said there’s no such thing as Ebola,” said a district doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They have their traditional beliefs and their traditional cures and they look up to their traditional leaders. Until we can bring the traditional leaders onside, it will be very difficult to convince them that Ebola even exists.”
As the death toll from the latest outbreak of the world’s deadliest virus climbed to 467 – far exceeding the previous most lethal outbreak which killed 254 people in Congo – officials and health workers are battling a surge of infections propelled by misinformation and doubt about the disease’s existence on one side, and mistrust in the scandal-hit governments on the other.
Following a Doctors Without Borders warning that the illness is “out of control” in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, west African health ministers recently began a two-day summit in Ghana’s capital of Accra, to discuss ways to strengthen regional cooperation. The World Health Organization has also warned four other West African countries – Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea Bissau – to prepare for the possible arrival of travelers carrying the virus.
Some government officials have disputed the WHO’s statement, saying the increasing death toll is a sign of better surveillance. “We are not saying everything is okay but there are fewer people dying in silence now, which is a good thing – the more we can identify when and where there are fatalities, the better we can prevent further cases,” Health Ministry official, Sakouba Keita, said from Guinea’s capital of Conakry.
The country has been the hardest hit by the virus, which first appeared there in February, before spreading through the tropical forests that sprawl into Liberia and Sierra Leone. More disturbingly, it has also jumped to all three countries’ densely-populated capitals.
“This is different from other cases just by the fact it’s a cross-border epidemic. Previous outbreaks have been very localized, which makes them easier to isolate and contain. Now for the first time, it’s also affecting urban areas,” said Dr Nestor Ndayimirije, Liberia’s WHO representative who has handled epidemics in several other countries.
Ebola was first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan in 1976, which suffered simultaneous outbreaks of different strains miles apart. It was named after Congo’s Ebola River, where its most lethal mutation – the Zaire strain – infected 318 people and killed 280.
Ebola has a fatality rate of up to 90% and is transmitted through contact with fluids of infected people or animals, like urine, sweat, blood and saliva, even after death.
A doctor in Sierra Leone said patients’ families often attempted to break them out of treatment centers – often successfully. “Some of them are in denial and think it is something they can treat at home, and faith healers are one of the problems for us. When you have patients disappearing like that, you don’t know where the virus will appear next.”
