FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, Monday September 8, 2014 – In a bid to stop the relentless spread of the deadly Ebola virus, the government of Sierra Leone plans to order every man, woman and child in the country not to leave the areas immediately surrounding their homes for a period of three days starting September 19.
According to the country’s deputy information minister Theo Nichol, the three-day shutdown would also make it easier for medical workers to trace suspected cases of the disease.
Nichol added that the period may be extended if needed, echoing the words of a presidential official who had previously indicated that the “lockdown” would last for four days.
International medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nevertheless begs to differ over the proposed countrywide quarantine, which it claims will not help control an Ebola outbreak and could lead to the disease spreading further as cases are concealed.
“It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola as they end up driving people underground and jeopardising the trust between people and health providers,” said MSF.
“This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further,” added the medical charity, which has been helping battle the world’s biggest ever outbreak of the disease across West Africa.
MSF added that door-to-door screening required high levels of expertise and, even when cases were detected, there were insufficient treatment centres and other essential facilities for patient care.
The international medical charity reiterated its calls for nations with civilian and military biological-disaster response capacities to send equipment and teams to West Africa.
“This remains our best hope of bringing this deadly outbreak under control as quickly as possible,” it said.
The outbreak was first identified in Guinea in March and has since spread across much of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases have also been recorded in Nigeria and Senegal, while a different strain of the virus has surfaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Late last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that more than 2,100 people have died.
The WHO went on to say that it will take months to bring Ebola under control and forecast as many as 20,000 cases.
Following a trip to the region, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr Tom Frieden warned that the Ebola outbreak is much worse than official figures show and is “spiralling out of control.”
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Sierra Leone’s “lockdown” could lead to further spread of Ebola, says medical group
