Sierra Leone is to impose a four-day countrywide lockdown in a drastic move to halt the spread of ebola, the government announced last night.
The West African nation, one of the worst to be hit by the virus, has said all citizens from across the country must stay indoors from September 18 - 21.
Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential advisor on the country’s Ebola task force, said the radical step would also allow health workers to identify cases in the early stages of the illness.
“The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all,” he told Reuters. As of Friday, Sierra Leone has recorded 491 of the total of suspected, probable and confirmed ebola deaths, according to UN figures.
Mr Kargbo said 21,000 people would be recruited to enforce the lockdown. Thousands of police and soldiers have already been deployed to enforce the quarantining of towns in Sierra Leone’s worst-hit regions near the border with Guinea.
Advertisement
Organisations from across the world are rushing funds and equipment to West Africa, but ebola is spreading faster than ever and experts say the lack of trained staff in weak health systems is a major obstacle to the response.
Earlier a Sierra Leone doctor explained how the country’s already fragile health system had “crumbled” in the wake of the disease.
Dr Kwame O’Neil warned that patients suffering from all kinds of ailments are dying for lack of treatment.
William Pooley, the British nurse who has recently recovered from the ebola, contracted the virus while working at the Kenema Government Hospital, in Sierra Leone.