Ebola has killed at least two people in what was the last remaining district in Sierra Leone unaffected by the virus, a government health officer said on Thursday.
Sierra Leone is one of three West African nations at the epicentre of the worst outbreak of the disease on record which has killed close to 4,500 people since first appearing in the Guinean forest last December, Reuters reports.
As Ebola spread across the rest of Sierra Leone, locals in the far northern Koinadugu district had tried to block movement in and out of the area to stop anyone bringing in the haemorrhagic fever.
However, disease surveillance officer, Abdul K. Sesay, said two of six samples taken from the village of Fankoya, where suspicious deaths had been recorded, tested positive on Wednesday.
“We have tightened surveillance around the area and are investigating how the two confirmed cases might have contracted the disease,” said Sesay.
Local and international health authorities are scrambling teams and supplies to help West African nations but, as of now, there are no Ebola treatment centres in Sierra Leone’s north.
“On Friday we will burn the house in which the two confirmed cases lived, and the two houses nearby to it,” said District Task Force representative Momoh Konteh.
He said the bodies of any future Ebola victims in the region would be cremated to contain the outbreak, regardless of the customs of the majority Muslim population.
Post a Comment