Ebola outbreak: Bodies ‘dumped in the street’ as Liberia faces panic over virus
As fears of the virus increase, chief medical officer and assistant health minister, says the outbreak has forced a number of hospitals and clinics to close because staff were scared to work in them
By Colin Freeman, in Monrovia and Hannah Strange
TelegraphUK
07 Aug 2014
Liberian medical chiefs warned that their war-shattered health service was being overwhelmed by the Ebola outbreak, as reports emerged of residents dumping bodies of suspected victims of the virus in the streets.
Tolbert Nyenswah, the deputy chief medical officer and assistant health minister, said the outbreak had forced a number of hospitals and clinics to close because staff were scared to work in them. He disclosed that some 67 health workers had become infected, and that many of the 6,000-strong work force were reluctant to return to their jobs.
He spoke to The Telegraph on Thursday in Liberia’s seafront capital, Monrovia, from where the government is mounting a desperate fight to stop the disease spreading.
On Wednesday night, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared a state of emergency across the country, and also despatched troops in full combat gear to block people travelling to Liberia’s capital from rural areas hit by Ebola.
In some parts of the country – devastated by civil war during the Nineties – locals had been dumping bodies of family members on the streets rather than taking them to hospitals or morgues, said Liberia’s information minister, Lewis Brown.
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