Ebola:Sierra Leone Orders Another Lockdown

Officials from the health ministry, the World Health Organization (WHO), and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that 87 bodies had been buried in eleven days in Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, the West African country said it was working with the UN in Kono in its efforts to contain the deadly epidemic. The International Federation of the Red Cross was setting up a treatment center in the Ebola-hit district. The remote area bordering Guinea currently has only one ambulance to transport sick people and blood samples.

The lockdown is the latest such measures adopted by the government after it ordered all businesses in the capital, Freetown, to close in November.The government also declared a nationwide three-day lockdown in September. According to the latest report by the WHO, Ebola has killed some 6,500 people in the three worst hit African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, infecting 17,800 across the eight countries affected since the beginning of the outbreak a year ago. However, the WHO predicts that the number of Ebola victims is likely to be much higher than the official statistics considering the 70-percent mortality rate. The media hype over Ebola comes at a time when thousands of people in Africa and other parts of the world die every day from hunger and preventable diseases.

Culled from Presstv