Lockdown Won't Contain Ebola In Sierra Leone: Doctors Warn

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says a proposed nation-wide lockdown in Sierra Leone will not help control the spread of the Ebola virus.

“It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola as they end up driving people underground and jeopardizing the trust between people and health providers,” MSF said on Saturday. Earlier in the say, Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential adviser on Sierra Leone’s Ebola task force, said that a four-day lockdown will be imposed in a bid to contain the spread of the disease. He said people will be prohibited from leaving their homes on September 18-21 in the country, worst hit by the disease, adding, “The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all.”

Doctors Without Borders said, “This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further.”Sierra Leone’s Deputy Information Minister Theo Nichol said the lockdown would allow medical workers to trace suspected cases easily. The MSF, however, said door-to-door screening needed a high level of expertise and that even if cases were found; there were not enough treatment centres and other facilities to house the patients.

The group once again called on the countries with civilian and military biological-disaster response capacities to send equipment and teams to West Africa. “This remains our best hope of bringing this deadly outbreak under control as quickly as possible,” it added. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 2,100 people have already died of the Ebola disease in West Africa. It also says two potential vaccines against the deadly virus could be available as soon as November. Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. It remains one of the world’s most virulent diseases, which kills between 25 to 90 percent of those who get infected with it.