“Don’t touch the walls!” a Western medical technician yelled out. “Totally infected.”
Some
Ebola patients still die at the hospital, perhaps four per day, in the
tent like temporary isolation ward at the back of the muddy grounds.
But
just as many, if not more, are dying in the city and neighboring
villages, greatly increasing the risk of spreading the disease and
undermining international efforts to halt the epidemic.
Medical workers transferred the body of a man who died of Ebola to the morgue in Kenema, Sierra Leone.Credit
Tommy Trenchard for The New York Times
“It’s
very, very dangerous, very hazardous; it is contributing to the Ebola
dead,” he said as his two deputies nodded glumly in agreement.
“You go
to the wards, there are no patients.”
Containing
the virus in Kenema — one of the nation’s largest cities and a gateway
to an area of the country where the disease is rampant — is critical to
taming the epidemic’s deadly advance across parts of West Africa.
More
than 930 people, including over 280 here in Sierra Leone, have died
since the outbreak was first identified across the border in Guinea in
March.
Since then, Sierra Leone has been hit with more cases of the disease than any other nation — 691out of 1,711 at last count
— and the hospital in Kenema quickly became a focal point in the effort
to grapple with the epidemic when the government set up a treatment
center here for cases in the region.
International
health officials have concentrated intensively on the hospital in the
last several days, training health care workers, preparing a more secure
isolation ward, establishing the rigorous separation of zones — low
risk, high risk — that characterizes the tightly sealed Doctors Without
Borders Ebola facilities elsewhere in stricken West Africa.
But
it is a tough struggle, and the recent history of the hospital looms.
More than 20 health care workers at the hospital have died trying to
battle the disease over the last several months, including nurses,
support staff and the country’s leading doctor.nities, including parts of western Liberia to stop
the spread of the virus from Sierra Leone.
Dead
bodies have been appearing on the streets and in houses throughout
Monrovia, with people staging roadblocks to ensure that health workers
remove them.
But with hospitals closed in the capital, it was unclear
how many of the victims had died of Ebola, or from other causes.
A
health worker said his burial team, one of 12, picked up seven bodies in
Monrovia and surrounding areas on Thursday alone. FULL STORY
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