| Irish Times | - |
A
Liberian nurse wearing protective clothing during the removal and
burial of an Ebola victim in the Virginia community on the outskirts of
Monrovia, Liberia.
State of emergency declared in Liberia over Ebola crisis
Reports emerge of families hiding sick relatives at home, bodies abandoned in streets
A
Liberian nurse wearing protective clothing during the removal and
burial of an Ebola victim in the Virginia community on the outskirts of
Monrovia, Liberia. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA
Soldiers are clamping down on people
trying to travel to Liberia’s capital from rural areas hard-hit by the
Ebola virus after the president declared a national state of emergency.
Reports have emerged of families hiding sick relatives at home and of abandoned bodies being left in the streets.
Similar efforts were under way in eastern areas of neighbouring Sierra Leone after officials there launched Operation Octopus to try to keep those with Ebola in isolation.
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While the outbreak has now reached four countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone account for more than 60 per cent of the deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
The outbreak that emerged in March has claimed at least 932 lives.
In announcing the 90-day state of emergency, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
said the worst recorded Ebola outbreak in history requires
“extraordinary measures for the very survival of our state and for the
protection of the lives of our people”.
“Ignorance,
poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices
continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease, especially in the
counties,” she said.
She warned that some civil
liberties could be suspended as needed and soldiers are already
restricting movements on the roads to the capital, Monrovia, witnesses
said.
Some soldiers were deployed to the
crossroads town of Klay about 40 km west of Monrovia in an effort to
stop people from three Ebola-infected counties from coming closer to the
capital.
Yet even as authorities tried to keep more people from reaching Monrovia, the capital has already been hard-hit by the virus.
National Health Workers Association president Joseph Tamba
said the state of emergency is necessary. But he said people should
have been given advance notice to buy food ahead of the movement
restrictions.
Previous outbreaks of the Ebola virus were limited to parts of Congo and Uganda, far from the capital cities in those countries.
In Zimbabwe, president Robert Mugabe
is considering withdrawing his country’s soldiers, police and prison
officers serving as UN peacekeepers in Liberia because of the outbreak,
the state-run Herald newspaper reported.
“We must not expose ourselves unnecessarily,” he was quoted as saying. Peacekeepers are in Liberia until elections in 2017.
The World Health Organisation is holding talks this week on whether to declare an international health emergency.
Spanish priest ‘stable’
A
Spanish missionary priest who tested positive for the Ebola virus is in
stable condition at a Madrid hospital after being evacuated from
Liberia.
Miguel Pajares (75) was helping to treat
people infected with Ebola and was one of three who tested positive at
the San Jose de Monrovia Hospital in Liberia earlier this week. He has
now been flown to Spain.
Juliana Bohi, an
Equatorial Guinean nun with Spanish nationality who worked with him, was
also brought back but she is not infected. Both worked for the San Juan
de Dios hospital order, a Catholic humanitarian group that runs
hospitals around the world.
Mr Pajares and Ms Bohi are being kept in isolation at the Carlos III centre in Madrid, which is run by La Paz hospital.
They
arrived at a military air base near Madrid and were strapped to
stretchers enclosed by transparent capsule-like tents that were pushed
by personnel in protective white suits wearing masks. A convoy of
ambulances took them to the hospital with a police escort.
Rafael
Perez-Santamarina, director of Madrid’s La Paz hospital, said that
initial medical checks showed Mr Pajares was in stable condition and Ms
Bohi was in good condition.
He confirmed that neither was bleeding, which is a symptom of an advanced stage of the illness.
Ms
Bohi and two other missionaries working at the Liberian hospital tested
negative. Officials said she would be retested in Madrid and released
if the result was again negative.
PA
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