An isolation unit for suspected cases during a previous Ebola outbreak. Credit: Luis Encinas/MSF
Health officials in Sierra Leone announced on Monday that the country’s death toll from the Ebola outbreak currently spreading throughout West Africa has doubled to at least 12 in a week. The alarming development raises fears around the continued spread of the disease, which has already killed over 220 people across the region since it was reported there earlier this year.
Last week the World Health Organization warned that the epidemic had taken a turn for the worse and that affected nations would have to re-double their efforts to contain the virus. However, the already evident obstacles in stemming the outbreak of the disease, which is considered one of the world’s deadliest with neither a cure nor a vaccine, point to the systemic barriers that remain in the official response to the epidemic.
via AFP
While governments in the region have attempted to take a proactive role in combating the outbreak, the relative inexperience West African officials and medical professionals have with the virus — which is more commonly found in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo — has hobbled relief efforts. So has the widespread misinformation and superstition around the disease. According to Doctors Without Borders Emergency Coordinator Marie-Christine Ferir, “The main challenges we face on the ground are resistance within communities and follow-up with people who have crossed borders and may be infected… Ebola is a disease that scares people and that is perceived as mysterious, but people can overcome it.”
The persistent stigma around Ebola — and the social ostracism faced by victims and survivors — has posed a serious challenge to aid workers as it has inspired reluctance among the afflicted to seek immediate medical attention. Guinea’s Ministry of Health even took the step of refraining from naming the neighborhoods where suspected cases were occurring due to hysteria around the disease. Sierra Leone’s government also published a fact sheet last week attempting to push back against ingrained myths (“Is it true that Ebola is a curse? No, it is not true. Ebola is a viral disease transmitted to humans from wild animals.”)
These piecemeal attempts at spreading (or withholding) information around the disease in order to contain hysteria seem incongruously meager as the outbreak continues to spread and death toll mounts. This is already the worst outbreak of Ebola on record and an episode so alarming that the African bloc ECOWAS has called it a serious threat to regional security. A mob attack on a Doctors Without Borders treatment facility in Guinea in April should confirm that the epidemic has the potential to inflame anger that —along with misinformation about the spread of the disease — could actually hinder aid efforts and enable the devastating outbreak to spread further.
