Security forces were yesterday enforcing quarantine around a slum in the Liberian capital, stepping up the government’s fight to stop the spread of Ebola and unnerving residents.
However, police later fired tear gas to disperse a stone-throwing crowd agitating to leave the quarantines West Point neighborhood.
Witnesses said there were no injuries.
Photo: EPA
Liberia has the highest death toll of the four West African countries affected by the dreaded disease, and its number of cases is rising the fastest
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Tuesday imposed a nighttime curfew, saying that authorities have not been able to curtail the spread of the disease in the face of defiance of their recommendations.
During a raid on Saturday last week on an Ebola screening center in West Point, bloody items were stolen and potential Ebola patients fled, raising fears the disease would spread out of control.
Armed soldiers and riot police yesterday began blocking anyone from entering or leaving the neighborhood. A resident saw a coast guard boat patrolling waters around the area.
Mistrust of the government runs high in West Point, and, as frustration with government’s inability to stop the spread of the disease grows, there is potential for unrest.
One resident, Richard Kieh, told The Associated Press by telephone that the community was in “disarray” following the arrival of forces yesterday morning.
“Prices of things have been doubled here,” he said.
Ebola has killed at least 1,229 of the more than 2,200 people it has sickened in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria in the outbreak, according to WHO figures.
The outbreak is currently the most severe in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but WHO said that there were encouraging signs that the tide was beginning to turn in Guinea.
There is also hope that Nigeria has managed to contain the disease to only a few cases after Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu on Tuesday said that a fifth person had died of the disease in that country.
All of Nigeria’s reported cases so far have been people who had direct contact with a Liberian-American man who was already infected when he arrived in the country on an airliner.
WHO is rushing to ramp up the global response to the outbreak, including emergency food deliveries to quarantined zones.
It said it was working with the UN’s World Food Programme to ensure food delivery to 1 million people living in Ebola quarantine zones cordoned off by local security forces in a border zone of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“Providing regular food supplies is a potent means of limiting unnecessary movement,” it said.
WHO has said it is coordinating a “massive scaling up” of international assistance to the worst affected countries.
However, a Liberian health ministry report for Sunday said its Ebola-hit Lofa County has had to stop burials due to a lack of body bags. It said the ministry warehouse had only three pairs of rubber boots remaining and no more bottles of hand sanitizers.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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