Liberia battled on Tuesday to halt the spread of the Ebola disease in its crowded, run-down oceanside capital Monrovia, recording the most new deaths as fatalities from the world’s worst outbreak of the deadly virus rose above 1,200.
The epidemic of the hemorrhagic disease, which can kill up to 90% of those it infects, is ravaging the three small West African states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and also has a toehold in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy.
As the Geneva-based World Health Organisation rushed to ramp up the global response to the outbreak first detected in March, including emergency food deliveries to quarantined zones, it announced that deaths from it had risen to 1,299 as of Aug. 16, out of 2,240 cases. Between Aug. 14-16, Liberia recorded the most new deaths, 53, followed by Sierra Leone with 17, and Guinea with 14.
The WHO said it was working with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to ensure food delivery to 1 million people living in Ebola quarantine zones cordoned off by local security forces in a border zone of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“Food has been delivered to hospitalized patients and people under quarantine who are not able to leave their homes to purchase food. Providing regular food supplies is a potent means of limiting unnecessary movement,” it said in a statement.
Besides infection in border zones, Liberia is fighting to stop the spread of the virus in the poorest neighborhoods of its capital, such as the West Point slum where at the weekend a rock-throwing crowd attacked and looted a temporary holding center for suspected Ebola cases, 17 of whom fled.
As fears of wider contagion increased – Ebola is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons - Liberia sent police to track down the fugitive suspected cases.
“We are glad to confirm that all of the 17 individuals have been accounted for and have now been transferred to JFK Ebola specialist treatment center,” Liberia’s Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters on Tuesday.