Chaos and Ebola fears in Sierra Leone

Thursday, August 28, 2014
By Paul Martin

STEPHEN DOUGLAS
TheGlobeandMail.com
Thursday, Aug. 28 2014

There’s a frantic feel palpable throughout downtown Freetown these days. A frenetic Ebola fanaticism has taken over, especially now that there are more than 40 confirmed cases within city limits. All talk is of Ebola, from street corner to office block, from cookery shops to bank queues.

Knowing your body temperature has become a fact of life in Freetown, where I’ve been living and working for the past five years since coming over from Canada.

I’ve had my temperature taken more times over these past three weeks than at any other time in my life. At almost every roadblock checkpoint, drivers and passengers are required to wash their hands and get their temperature taken before proceeding. I queried a guard recently at a UNICEF compound about the accuracy of the “point and click” laser temperature-taker that gets a reading from your forehead. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We only tell you to go to the hospital if the ‘gun’ makes a beeping noise.”

Fear of hospitals

The Rest…HERE

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