Posted on July 15, 2014

Ebola Panic Spreads in West Africa as Locals Accuse Aid Workers of Spreading Deadly Virus

Jessica Elgot, Huffington Post, July 4, 2014

When villagers in some of the most remote corners of West Africa began to show symptoms of a deadly, unknown virus, locals tried traditional cures, begged local healers for help, fed the afflicted nourishing meat and buried the dead with care, manually washing the bodies. But these acts have only hastened the spread of the Ebola epidemic currently gripping the region.

Rural communities in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia now face the sudden arrival of strange foreign health workers, clad in spaceman suits. For many the equation is simple–before the arrival of these green-suited and helmeted bods, there was no disease. And now there is.

Deteriorating victims, sick from internal hemorrhaging, are taken from local witch doctors to make-shift hospitals while still-infectious, festering bodies are whisked away before traditional rites can be administered.

The intense fear and anger which surrounds not only the horrifying and mysterious disease, but also the aid workers who come to help, is breeding an atmosphere of mutiny.

The Red Cross in Guinea said it had been forced to suspend operations after staff there were threatened by a knife-wielding gang in the southern town of Gueckedou. In Macenta, in southeastern Guinea, an angry mob attacked an MSF clinic, accusing the aidworkers of bringing in Ebola.

“We’ve suspended operations for safety reasons,” a Red Cross official in West Africa told Reuters, asking not to be named. “I imagine this won’t be the last time this happens.”

Witchcraft

Sheffield-born Gwen Wilson, a health delegate with the British Red Cross (BRC), has just returned from Sierra Leone. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding, which breeds fear, and it’s that fear that presents the biggest challenge,” she told HuffPost UK.

“There are a lot of myths, some think the government has planted it in opposition areas; others believe the disease is a punishment, or a result of witchcraft.

“Some families believe that when their loved one goes into the ambulance they will be given an injection to kill them.”

The rural diet is also causing the spread of disease, Wilson said. “In West Africa life is very basic; people are dealing with bushmeat, one of the primary sources of infection. Even though cooked meat is fine, traces of the virus on the hands from preparation can be enough to cause infection.”

Of those who do survive, their recovery is rarely greeted with delight. “People are scared of the survivors so those rare few who do recover from the disease are stigmatised,” Wilson said.

Fieldworkers from MSF and the Red Cross, who have been threatened and attacked, report that villagers often refuse to believe that Ebola exists, because all information is gleaned from local leaders and witchdoctors, who have had no proper briefing from government on the disease.

“They are a trusted source of information so it’s vital they are on board, armed with the right information, as quickly as possible,” Wilson said.

‘Out of control’

Ebola is one of the world’s most deadly diseases, highly infectious and likely to kill 90% of those who catch it. Victims suffer high temperature, vomiting and diarrhea, followed by internal bleeding and multiple organ failure.

Described as “out of control” by Dr Bart Janssens, director of operations for MSF, the current epidemic is already the worst in history, with 467 people dead and almost 300 other suspected or confirmed cases.

And no cure exists. Health workers that are able to treat victims can only attempt to keep the victims comfortable and their temperatures down–and they must dress from head-to-toe in protective suits.

The World Health Organisation has also warned that four other West African countries–Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea Bissau–could be at risk as populations cross borders, meaning millions of people lie in the path of the virus.

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More often, misinformation is spreading faster than the health workers can counter it. Text messages have circulated in Guinea, according to Reuters, which claimed Senegalese researchers had found the cure for Ebola–a mixture of hot chocolate, Nescafe, milk, sugar and raw onions taken once a day for three days.

The risk does not stop after death. Traditional methods of burial, involving the manual washing of the body, has been identified as one of the key factors in passing on the disease. One specific ethnicity at risk is the Kissi–who live across all three countries. Bodies of the dead are traditionally kept at home before burial, and mourners touch the head of the corpse.

Witch doctors not the answer

In Kenema, Sierra Leone, rioting broke out as relatives attempted to force their way into an ambulance to retrieve a victim’s body, to give him the traditional burial.

Though Western aid organisations and governments want to convince the afflicted populations that witch doctors and traditional healers are not the answer to the epidemic, the reality is that Western medicine has no cure either.

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