Sierra Leone’s nationwide round-the-clock curfew, designed to halt the spread of the Ebola virus, triggered a clash in the streets Saturday as residents attacked a burial team clad in biohazard suits, forcing them to abandon the bodies and flee.
The curfew, in the second of its three days, closed much of the country and stranded all but essential services workers and health volunteers at home.
“Today, the life of everyone is at stake, but we will get over this difficulty if we all do what we have been asked to do,” Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma said in a televised address late Thursday, shortly before the curfew took effect. “These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.”
The incident east of Freetown, the capital, was the latest sign that poor communication on Ebola by governments and global health agencies has bred public suspicion and resentment, with rumors that the virus is a conspiracy by outsiders to kill people. At least 562 people are believed to have died from Ebola in the country.
About 30,000 volunteers are supposed to visit every household in the country by Sunday. They operate in teams of four, each of which is expected to see 20 households a day. After visiting a house, a team makes a chalk mark on the exterior to show that residents had been seen.
The aim of the project was to find Ebola sufferers who refused to go into isolation treatment wards, placing others at risk. The effort also seeks to overcome fear and suspicion and to communicate information about the disease to the country’s 6 million citizens.
However, critics have said that the program’s goal of reach every household is unrealistic. And humanitarian workers have said the effort could do more harm than good, destroying relationships between the population and health authorities in a region where rumors and conspiracy theories are rife.
“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,” the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said in a statement when the curfew was proposed. “This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further.”
Most people remained at home Saturday but news agencies reported some people ran off to avoid the curfew.
Saturday’s attack on a team trying to bury five dead followed several attacks on health workers in neighboring Guinea. Including one case last week in which eight members of a health delegation were killed by villagers. The Sierra Leone team eventually did manage to bury the five bodies with the help of a police escort.
The government’s emergency Ebola operation center had received 102 calls by 3 p.m. Saturday reporting suspected Ebola cases, the center’s director, Steven Gaoja, told Agence France-Presse news agency.
“On the whole we came out successful. We feel confident that the initial problems we encountered have been slashed,” he said.
Sierra Leone is not the only nation adopting tough measures as the number of infected people has soared in West Africa. The Liberian government quarantined an entire slum in the capital, Monrovia, sealing off its more than 50,000 residents for more than a week.
Authorities in five West African countries have reported more than 5,300 suspected and confirmed Ebola cases, including 2,600 deaths, according to figures released by the World Health Organization. Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea account for most of the cases.
