NEARLY six months after Guinea registered its first cases of the ebola virus, the outbreak is still spreading. A World Health Organisation statement last week said 467 people had died from the illness, which has been confirmed in more than 60 communities in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, including the capital cities of the former two countries.
Past outbreaks have been contained and eliminated through careful tracking of individual cases. But the current outbreak has proved harder to manage. West Africa has higher population density and better roads than Central Africa, the site of previous outbreaks, meaning the illness has more opportunity to spread. Robert Garry, a virologist from Tulane University in New Orleans, points out that the current virus is less aggressive than some previous trains, meaning that infected patients are able to spread the disease farther after symptoms begin. These two factors have created a "perfect storm", he says.
Superstition about ebola does not help. Many do not believe the disease is real, and conspiracy theories are running wild. In Kenema, the main treatment centre in Sierra Leone, a rumour that medical staff...Continue reading
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