Liberia’s Health System Is Collapsing As Ebola Spreads
Stella Dawson, Reuters
BusinessInsider.com
Aug. 7, 2014
WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The health care system in Liberia is collapsing, hospitals closing down and medical workers fleeing from the Ebola epidemic, which is poised to worsen, Liberia’s foreign minister said on Thursday.
“People are dying from common diseases because the health care system is collapsing,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan said in an interview with Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“It is going to have a long-term impact, even after this crisis is behind us.”
Treatable diseases such as malaria and diarrhea are left untended because frightened Liberians are shunning medical centers, and these deaths could outstrip those from the Ebola virus by three or four fold, he said.
But his biggest concern is the spreading epidemic.
“We are hearing it is going to get worse before it gets better. We do not know how much worse that will be. My main worry is the fear of how many people will die. Right now it is out of control and jumps from place to place,” Ngafuan said.
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