August 21, 2014

"50,000 quarantined in Liberia slum to contain spread of Ebola"

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2024355394_liberiabarricadexml.html


MONROVIA, Liberia — Riot police and soldiers acting on their president’s orders used scrap wood and barbed wire to seal 50,000 people inside their Liberian slum Wednesday, trying to contain the Ebola outbreak that has killed 1,350 people and counting across West Africa.

Soldiers repelled the surging crowd with live rounds, driving hundreds of men and boys back into the slum known as West Point. One in the crowd, Shakie Kamara, 15, lay on the ground near the barricade, his right leg apparently wounded by a bullet. “Help me,” pleaded Kamara, who was barefoot and wore a green Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt.

Lt. Col. Abraham Kromah, the national police’s head of operations, arrived a few minutes later. “This is messed up,” he said, looking at the teenager while complaining about the surging crowd. “They injured one of my police officers. That’s not cool. It’s a group of criminals that did this. Look at this child. God in heaven help us.” It was unclear what happened to Kamara.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll is rising most quickly in Liberia, which accounts for at least 576 of the deaths. At least 2,473 people have been sickened across West Africa.



Elsewhere in the article, it notes this is the neighborhood in which an Ebola center was recently raided. It adds new context that the residents in the neighborhood had feared their area was being turned into a "dumping ground for the disease."

It also includes that at least one family of a local official was escorted out, which likely compounds people's fears of how they are being treated differently - flights to safety for those with power and an armed quarantine for those without.

There's no info in the article about how these residents or others in another area placed in quarantine will receive, water, food or health care.

They must be terrified.

edited to add photo and link to additional photos that show conditions there



http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ebola-outbreak-photos-fear-panic-liberian-forces-seal-west-point-slum-contain-disease-1461985