fbpx

Ebola Patient Kidnapped By Relatives ‘A Risk To All’

Ebola Patient Kidnapped By Relatives ‘A Risk To All’

The hunt is on in Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown for a woman infected with Ebola who was forcibly removed from a hospital by her relatives.

She is the first Freetown resident to test positive for the virus, according to BBCNews.

Radio stations around the country are asking for help in finding the 32-year-old, who has been described as a “risk to all.”

The King Harman Road Hospital was stormed by the Ebola patient’s family Thursday, according to Sidi Yahya Tunis, a spokesperson for Sierra Leone’s ministry of health.

The woman, an apprentice hairdresser, lives in the densely populated area of Wellington in the east of Freetown, said BBC’s Umaru Fofona.

The social stigma associated with ebola is complicating efforts to contain the worst-ever outbreak of the virus, Bloomberg News reports.

Denial and hostility to medical workers are slowing efforts to stop the virus from spreading, the United Nations Children’s Fund said. There are widespread misconceptions about the virus. Some people believe the disease isn’t real or that white researchers have introduced it to experiment on Africans. Some hide when they get sick. Survivors are often treated as outcasts.

Ebola cases in Sierra Leone have been concentrated in the country’s eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun, just across the border from the Guekedou region of Guinea where the outbreak started.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the deadliest to date. The virus kills up to 90 percent of those infected but if patients get early treatment, their chances of survival increase. The fatality rate of the current outbreak is about 60 percent.

The outbreak began in Eastern Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Since February, 660 people have died of Ebola in the three West African countries.

Nigerian health officials say a Liberian man admitted to a hospital in Lagos who had been under quarantine, has died of suspected Ebola.

Ebola spreads through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.

These are the latest West Africa Ebola outbreak numbers, according to World Health Organization, as reported by BBCNews:

Guinea – 314 deaths, 415 cases
Liberia – 127 deaths, 224 cases
Sierra Leone – 219 deaths, 454 cases

The World Health Organization said Thursday that 219 of the 660 ebola deaths in the current outbreak have been in Sierra Leone.

Earlier this week, the government of Sierra Leone announced that a leading virologist who treated more than 100 ebola patients was sick with the virus. He is being treated by Doctors Without Borders.

Medical staff in Sierra Leone are angry with the government for the way it has handled the outbreak, BBCNews reports. A demonstration planned in Kenema town Friday was cancelled at the request of security agencies.

Nurses at Kenema hospital — which treats all Ebola cases in the district — went on strike for a day Monday after three of their colleagues died of Ebola.