DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Deep in the forests of southern
Guinea, the first victims fell ill with high fevers. People assumed it
was the perennial killer malaria and had no reason to fear touching the
bodies, as is the custom in traditional funerals.
Some desperate
relatives brought their loved ones to the distant capital in search of
better medical care, unknowingly spreading what ultimately was
discovered to be Ebola, one of the world’s most deadly diseases.
Ebola,
a hemorrhagic fever that can cause its victims to bleed from the ears
and nose, had never before been seen in this part of West Africa where
medical clinics are few and far between. The disease has turned up in at
least two other countries — Liberia and Sierra Leone — and 539 deaths
have been attributed to the outbreak that is now the largest on record.
The
key to halting Ebola is isolating the sick, but fear and panic have
sent some patients into hiding, complicating efforts to stop its spread.
Ebola has reached the capitals of all three countries, and the World
Health Organization reported 44 new cases including 21 deaths on Friday.
There
has been "a gross misjudgment across the board in gauging the severity
and scale of damage the current Ebola outbreak can unleash," the aid
group Plan International warned earlier this month.
"There are no
cases from outside Africa to date. The threat of it spreading though is
very much there," said Dr. Unni Krishnan, head of disaster preparedness
and response for the aid group.
Preachers are calling for divine
intervention, and panicked residents in remote areas have on multiple
occasions attacked the very health workers sent to help them. In one
town in Sierra Leone, residents partially burned down a treatment center
over fears that the drugs given to victims were actually causing the
disease.
Activists are trying to spread awareness in the countryside where literacy is low, even through a song
penned about Ebola.
"It
has no cure, but it can be prevented; let us fight it together. Let’s
protect ourselves, our families and our nation," sings the chorus.
"Do
not touch people with the signs of Ebola," sings musician and activist
Juli Endee. "Don’t eat bush meat. Don’t play with monkey and baboons.
Plums that bats have bitten or half-eaten, don’t eat them."
Guinea
first notified WHO about the emergence of Ebola in March and soon after
cases were reported in neighboring Liberia. Two months later there were
hopes that the outbreak was waning, but then people began falling ill
in Sierra Leone.
Doctors Without Borders says it fears the number
of patients now being treated in Sierra Leone could be "just the tip of
the iceberg."
Nearly 40 were reported in a single village in the
country’s east.
"We’re under massive time pressure: The longer it
takes to find and follow up with people who have come in contact with
sick people, the more difficult it will be to control the outbreak,"
said Anja Wolz, emergency coordinator for the group, also referred to by
its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres.
This Ebola virus is a
new strain and did not spread to West Africa from previous outbreaks in
Uganda and Congo, researchers say. Many believe it is linked to the
human consumption of bats carrying the virus. Many of those who have
fallen ill in the current outbreak are family members of victims and the
health workers who treated them.
There is no cure and no vaccine
for Ebola, and those who have survived managed to do so only by
receiving rehydration and other supportive treatment. Ebola’s high
fatality rate means many of those brought to health clinics have been
merely kept as comfortable as possible in quarantine as they await
death. As a result, some families have been afraid to take sick loved
ones to the clinics.
"Let this warning go out: Anyone found or
reported to be holding suspected Ebola cases in homes or prayer houses
can be prosecuted under the law of Liberia," President Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf stated recently.
Her comments came just days after Sierra
Leone issued a similar warning, saying some patients had discharged
themselves from the hospital and had gone into hiding.
At the
airport in Guinea’s capital, departing passengers must undergo
temperature screening, and those with a fever are pulled aside for
further evaluation. Still, the stigma of Ebola follows Guineans well
outside the region.
"The police treated us like we were aliens.
They said they didn’t want us in their country because of the disease
affecting Guinea," says Tafsir Sow, a businessman who was briefly
detained at the airport in Casablanca, Morocco before continuing on to
Paris. "I had tears in my eyes."
Still, WHO health officials are
hopeful they will be able to get the situation under control in the next
several weeks. A recent conference in the capital of Ghana brought
together health authorities from across the affected areas, and the
countries agreed on a common approach to fight Ebola.
"When you
have it spread, of course it’s moving in the wrong direction," said Dr.
Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s assistant director-general for health security and
environment. "You want to see the number of infections going down. So we
really have to redouble our efforts. But saying that it’s out of
control makes it sound like there are no solutions. This is a virus for
which there are very clear solutions."
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Associated Press
writers John Heilprin in Geneva; Boubacar Diallo in Conakry, Guinea;
Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Jonathan Paye-Layleh in
Monrovia, Liberia and Francis Kokutse in Accra, Ghana contributed to
this report.