Sierra Leone places 1.5m people under quarantine
In other areas, including in the capital, homes will be put
under quarantine when cases are identified, a government statement after the
address said.
The Ebola outbreak, the largest ever, has also hit Liberia and Guinea and is believed to have
sickened more than 6,200 people. An Ebola patient also slipped into Senegal from Guinea but the disease does not
appear to have spread there. Nigeria
has linked 20 cases to the disease and eight deaths after a man infected with
Ebola traveled there from Liberia ;
the outbreak seems to have been contained there as well.
"Nigeria is free of the virus now but we know that to
be permanently free from it, we must remain
vigilant and work with WHO and the international community to eradicate
it completely from our sub-region and forestall the possibility of its
re-emergence on our shores through migration," Nigerian President Goodluck
Jonathan said Wednesday night.
The outbreak's unprecedented scale and geographic spread
have pushed governments to impose severe measures, like the cordoning off of
entire towns or regions. Last week, Sierra Leone imposed a three-day
nationwide lockdown, confining its 6 million people to their homes while health
teams spread out to look for the sick and educate people about the disease.
That exercise revealed that the outbreak is worse than
thought, the government said, with 160 Ebola cases found during the shutdown.
"There is a desperate need to step up our response to
this dreaded disease," the Sierra
Leone government statement said. "The
prognosis is that without additional interventions or changes in community
behavior, the numbers will increase exponentially and the situation will
rapidly deteriorate."
Two districts near the outbreak's epicenter -- Kenema and
Kailahun -- had already been isolated. Liberia , the country hardest-hit by
the disease, cordoned off areas of its capital at one point to slow
transmission.
Comments
Post a Comment