Violence erupted in an Ebola quarantine zone in Liberia’s capital Wednesday when soldiers opened fire and used tear gas on crowds as they evacuated a state official and her family.

Four residents were injured in the clashes that flared in Monrovia’s West Point slum which has been contained as part of new security measures aimed at containing the deadly virus.

The crackdown in Liberia comes as authorities around the world scramble to stem the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 1,200 people across west Africa this year.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf quarantined West Point and Dolo Town, to the east of the capital, and imposed a night-time curfew as part of new drastic measures to fight the disease.

Residents of West Point, where club-wielding youths stormed an Ebola medical facility on Saturday, reacted with fury to the crackdown, hurling stones and shouting at the security forces.

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By AP.

Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital’s largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses.

The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday.

Up to 30 patients were staying at the center and many of them fled at the time of the raid, said Nyenswah. Once they are located they will be transferred to the Ebola center at Monrovia’s largest hospital, he said.

West Point residents went on a “looting spree,” stealing items from the clinic that were likely infected, said a senior police official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. The residents took medical equipment and mattresses and sheets that had bloodstains, he said. Ebola is spread through bodily fluids including blood, vomit, feces and sweat.

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Struggling Liberia creates “plague villages” in Ebola epicenter – potential refugee nightmare

By The Extinction Protocol.

To try to control the Ebola epidemic spreading through West Africa, Liberia has quarantined remote villages at the epicenter of the virus, evoking the “plague villages” of medieval Europe that were shut off from the outside world. With few food and medical supplies getting in, many abandoned villagers face a stark choice: stay where they are and risk death or skip quarantine, spreading the infection further in a country ill-equipped to cope. In Boya, in northern Liberia’s Lofa County, Joseph Gbembo, who caught Ebola and survived, says he is struggling to raise 10 children under five years old and support five widows after nine members of his family were killed by the virus. Fearful of catching Ebola themselves, the 30-year-old’s neighbors refuse to speak with him and blame him for bringing the virus to the village. “I am lonely,” he said. “Nobody will talk to me and people run away from me.” He says he has received no food or health care for the children and no help from government officials. Aid workers say that if support does not arrive soon, locals in villages like Boya, where the undergrowth is already spreading among the houses, will simply disappear down jungle footpaths. “If sufficient medication, food and water are not in place, the community will force their way out to fetch food and this could lead to further spread of the virus,” said Tarnue Karbbar, a worker for charity Plan International based in Lofa County/

Ebola has killed at least 1,145 people in four African nations, but in the week through to August 13, Lofa County recorded more new cases than anywhere else – 124 new cases of Ebola and 60 deaths. The World Health Organization and Liberian officials have warned that, with little access by healthcare workers to the remote areas hidden deep in rugged jungle zones, the actual toll may be far higher. Troops have been deployed under operation “White Shield” to stop people from abandoning homes and infecting others in a country where the majority of cases remain at large, either because clinics are full or because they are scared of hospitals regarded as ‘death traps.’ “There has to be concern that people in quarantined areas are left to fend for themselves,” said Mike Noyes, head of humanitarian response at ActionAid UK. “Who is going to be the police officer who goes to these places? There’s a risk that these places become plague villages.” Aid workers say the virus reminds them of the forces roaming Liberia during the civil war, making it a byword for brutality. “It was like the war. It was so desolate,” said Adolphus Scott, a worker for U.N. child agency UNICEF describing Zango Town in the jungles of northern Liberia, where most of the 2,000 residents had either died of Ebola or fled.

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While there is widespread concern about the latest Ebola outbreak, most agree with the decision to allow two infected Americans into the country to receive treatment, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. The poll finds 62 percent of Americans are concerned the Ebola virus in West Africa will spread to the United States. That includes 30 percent who are “very” concerned. About one in four (27 percent) disagrees with letting the infected Americans into the country for treatment. Most voters — 68 percent — agree with allowing them in. Even among those concerned about an Ebola outbreak here at home, 59 percent think the Americans should have been allowed into the country for treatment. That jumps to 84 percent among those not concerned about the virus spreading.

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Five illegal immigrants detained in Albania with Ebola symptoms

Albanian police have detained 40 illegal immigrants from Africa today, five of whom are currently under quarantine after exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, Macedonian newspaper Vecer has reported. Police suspect the five are of Eritrean origin, having arrived illegally in Europe via Greece. They are currently being tested for carrying the Ebola virus in hospital in the Albanian city of Vlore, less than 86 miles from Italy’s closest port. The news comes after one person was quarantined in Montenegro earlier today under suspicion they may be infected with Ebola. The possible victim entered Montenegro from a West African country with an epidemic of the disease, according to the public health institute. In an attempt to prevent the spread of Ebola, Serbian authorities have currently put 14 people under medical surveillance, each hailing from either Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea or Nigeria, Bulgarian newspaper Standart reported. They will remain under watch for the 21-day incubation period of the Ebola virus.

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Nigeria reports another Ebola case – experts warn magnitude of the crisis not understood nor comprehended

Nigeria’s health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, has announced there is another Ebola case in Africa’s most populous country, bringing the total confirmed cases there to 11. Chukwu told reporters in Abuja, the capital, Thursday that the latest patient is a doctor who helped treat the first Ebola case in the country, Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who arrived from Liberia last month with the virus and died on July 25. All those who are ill with Ebola in Nigeria had direct contact with Sawyer. Nigeria has recorded three deaths: Sawyer, a Nigerian nurse who helped treat him as well as an employee of the Economic Community Of West African States who helped transport Sawyer to a hospital after he landed in Lagos, the commercial capital, and collapsed at the airport. –ABC

Magnitude of crisis not understood: There is evidence the numbers of dead and sickened by Ebola in West Africa may “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak,” the World Health Organization said Thursday. The U.N. health agency said it was prepared for the crisis to continue for months. With more than 1,060 deaths and 1,975 sickened, the Ebola outbreak is already the deadliest ever. Liberian officials faced a difficult choice Thursday: deciding which handful of Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug that could prove life-saving, ineffective or even harmful. ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the West African country late Wednesday. A day later, no one had yet received the treatment, which officials said would go to three people. The outbreak, which was first identified in March in Guinea and since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, has overwhelmed the already strained health systems in West Africa and raised questions about whether authorities are doing enough to respond. There is no licensed treatment for Ebola, a virus transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, so doctors have turned to the limited supply of untested drugs to treat some cases. The Liberian government had previously said two doctors would receive ZMapp, but it was unclear who else would. Information Minister Lewis Brown said Thursday it would probably be another health care worker.

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Korean Air suspends Kenya flights over Ebola – cuts all ties with African continent

Korean Air Lines Co. is suspending flights to and from Kenya in what it says is a measure to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. The South Korean flag carrier said on Thursday it would stop operating flights between the southern city of Incheon and Nairobi from August 20. The carrier flies to Nairobi, which is its only destination in Africa, three times a week and did not say when it would resume its service. Ebola has not been detected in Kenya yet during this most recent outbreak, the worst recorded. The outbreak has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the year in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria last month became the fourth West African country affected. Dubai carrier Emirates was the first major international airline to impose a ban in response to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa by suspending flights to Guinea on August 2. News of the move came after Liberia received the last known doses of the experimental drug ZMapp, to be administered to a small number of patients infected with the virus. The boxes containing the drug were brought to Liberia on board a flight from the US, carried personally by Liberian Foreign Minister Augustine Ngafuan.

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There’ll be no stopping Ebola’s spread in Philippines, says leading Filipino doctor of infectious diseases

The Philippines, the local primary and secondary hospitals will have a hard time containing its spread, according to an infectious disease specialist. At a health forum on Tuesday, Dr. Ludovico Jurao said the infection control committees in these hospitals were not fully capable of managing such a highly contagious disease and, without the help of experts; they may even contribute to an outbreak. “In containing Ebola, an infected patient must be confined to one room. But in secondary hospitals, patients stay in wards so the rate of transmission of diseases is high,” said Jurao, who is also president of the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID). Jurao said the PSMID had 200 members who could be tapped to help these hospitals. “There is really no way to curb the spread of the disease but through strong infection control measures in hospitals,” he said. But he also stressed that the key to preventing Ebola from entering the country was for those who come from Ebola-hit countries in West Africa, especially returning Filipino migrant workers, to fully disclose their health condition and their whereabouts upon arrival in the Philippines. He said some overseas Filipino workers had a tendency to keep to themselves information about their health to prevent them from being separated from their families.

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In calmer times in Liberia, before the fear of Ebola became as feverish as the onset of the disease itself, Cecilia Johnson’s funeral could have been a dignified affair.

But when she died of an unspecified illness on Thursday, her family in St Paul’s Bridge, a slum district of the capital, Monrovia, ignored government edicts to hand her body over for cremation.

Instead, fearing the prospect of being quarantined themselves if they reported it, they sneaked it to the cemetery in neighbouring Tyre Shop Community for burial the following morning.

The problem was that nobody wanted it there. Halfway through the burial, they were confronted by an angry crowd of Tyre Shop residents, demanding to know why a potentially-infected corpse was going in “their” cemetery. A scuffle ensued, and eight hours later, Ms Johnson’s corpse lay parked by the roadside in a rusting, mud-spattered wheelbarrow, covered by a piece of carpet and still seeking a final resting place.

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The Nigerian government on Wednesday described the Ebola outbreak in the country as a national emergency. Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu said this at an emergency meeting convened by the House of Representatives Committee on Health over the Ebola outbreak in Abuja, the nation’s capital city. He said out of six Nigerians diagnosed with Ebola virus, one had died on Tuesday, adding that the other five patients were receiving treatment. The minister said everyone in the world now was at risk, adding that the experience of Nigeria had opened the eyes of the world to the reality of Ebola. He said there was no empirical evidence to show that bitter kola will prevent or cure the highly infectious disease. The outbreak, by far the largest in the nearly 40-year history of the disease, has infected 1,711 people and killed 932 this year in four western African countries — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — according to the World Health Organization. –Xinhua

CDC issues highest alert level: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday ramped up its response to the expanding Ebola outbreak, a move that frees up hundreds of employees and signals the agency sees the health emergency as a potentially long and serious one. The CDC’s “level 1 activation” is reserved for the most serious public health emergencies, and the agency said the move was appropriate considering the outbreak’s “potential to affect many lives.” The CDC took a similar move in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and again in 2009 during the bird-flu threat…

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Several Britons quarantined for Ebola amidst claims the virus may be airborne

Several British nationals have been voluntarily quarantined with suspected Ebola, according to the Daily Telegraph. The admission came from public health officials and follows revelations an individual in Cardiff had expressed fears they had contracted the disease. The exact number of people quarantined and their exact location have not been confirmed, but they are believed to be spread across the UK. The problem faced by public health authorities is that tests for Ebola are ineffective until the patients show symptoms. This means that they have to wait up to 21 days, which is the maximum incubation period. The World Health Organization has also claimed that the virus is spreading faster than they can control. This may be because of a misunderstanding about how the virus is transmitted; in 2012 a study suggested that Ebola may be transmitted through the air. Whilst the study was not conclusive the BBC reported that Canadian scientists had found that Ebola had been transmitted between animals that had never come into direct contact. This suggests that the current theory that it is only transmitted by exchange of bodily fluids may be wrong. However it is known that the individual in Cardiff has been confined to their home for the past week, after they returned from West Africa. The person visited West Africa where more than 1,600 people have been infected with the virus in recent months, resulting in 887 deaths. Public Health Wales said the person is “currently staying away from work and limiting contact with other people voluntarily.” A health official admitted there were “several cases” across the UK, but stressed the quarantines were purely a precaution as none of them had developed any symptoms of Ebola.

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