The most deadly Ebola epidemic in West Africa is currently underway, but the disease isn't bringing just sickness to the land. As health agencies attempt to contain the illness, suspicious local natives are chasing away health workers and shunning any available treatments out of fear.
According to Reuters Africa News, locals from Guinea to Sierra Leone and beyond are overcome with the belief that any offered treatments are actually tricks, and that things like hospital visits would result in death. Internal U.N. reports describe health workers on the border of Libera's Lofa County being confronted by locals with homemade weapons and eventually threatened enough for them to their medical site. Although the suspicions began with locals simply avoiding the workers, the reactions have now turned threatening and angry.
The current death count is 539 since February, reports Aljazeera, out of 888 total recorded cases. Officials are swamped with cases of the disease on top of the fear and suspicion that is also being transmitted with it. There is a dire need for the disease to be treated in those already infected, and contained away from those not yet touched by it, but the work is being slowed because of the rumors and negative feelings towards treatment.
"If we are to break the chain of Ebola transmission," says Manuel Fontaine, a UNICEF Regional Director for Western and Central Africa, "it is crucial to combat the fear surrounding it and earn the trust of the communities." Government officials of Nigeria have committed almost $3.5 million to the affected states, in an effort to contain the plague.