Liberia: Residents Clash With Police Over Ebola Quarantine

By Staff Writer

At least four people were injured in clashes after security forces fired live rounds and teargas at residents of West Point slum in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia over the government's attempts to enforce quarantine in a bid to contain the spread of the Ebola virus on Wednesday August 20.

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 August 16, reacted with fury to the crackdown, hurling stones and shouting at the security forces.

"It is inhumane," resident Patrick Wesseh said."They can't suddenly lock us up without any warning, how are our children going to eat?"

Meanwhile, Liberia’s Defense Minister, Brownie Samukai has denied that troops enforcing Monrovia’s West Point slum Ebola quarantine shot directly at r a large crowd, mostly youths who purportedly attacked the soldiers who were sent to rescue the female commissioner of the area, Aisha Flowers, who had been held hostage.  

He said the soldiers fired in the air to disperse the protesters in which three people were wounded, not by gunfire, but when they tried to cross over a barb wire security barricade.

“This morning, a group of unruly residents came and began to attack the police and military personnel, throwing rocks, sticks, anything they could put their hands on. And, they went to attack the residence of the district commissioner. It was within the context of that those shots were fired in the air, I repeat, in the air to disperse the crowds,” he said.

National director of Liberia Campaigners for Change, a human rights organization, said the soldiers used live fire on the protesters.

“I’m telling you live bullets were used.  A 15 year-old boy by the name of Sylvester Kromah was shot in the leg by the Liberian army, the AFL (Armed Forces of Liberia).  When he went to rescue one of his family members, who also received a bullet in the process, his leg was shot by the AFL soldiers,” the official said.

Liberia, with 466 deaths from 834 diagnosed cases, has seen the biggest toll among the four West African countries that have been hit by Ebola with death toll standing at 1,229, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Fears that the virus could spread to other continents have seen flights to the region cancelled, and authorities around the world adopting measures to screen travelers arriving from affected nations.

The disease first broke out in Guinea where 394 people have succumbed so far, and then the virus spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, overwhelming inadequate public health services already battling common deadly diseases such as malaria.

Straining the situation even further, several top officials leading the fight have lost their lives to the disease.

A doctor who treated Nigeria's first Ebola patient was named among the dead on Tuesday August 19, taking the death toll in Africa's most populous country to five.

The UN's new point man on Ebola, David Nabarro is due Thursday to begin a visit to West Africa aimed at shoring up health services in the four affected nations.

The British physician said he would focus on "revitalizing the health sectors" in the affected countries, many of which have only recently emerged from years of devastating conflict.

Efforts to contain the epidemic have also run up against local distrust of outside doctors, and stories of aid workers carrying the infection.

Liberia's leader warned that local rituals were among the factors spreading the disease.

"We have been unable to control the spread due to continued denials, cultural burying practices, disregard for the advice of health workers and disrespect for the warnings by the government," Sirleaf said.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib noted "encouraging signs" in Nigeria and Guinea, where prevention measures and work to trace lines of infection were starting to take effect.

The Nigerian outbreak has been traced to a sole foreigner, a Liberian-American who died in late July in Lagos. All subsequent Nigerian victims have had direct contact with him.

In Sierra Leone, where 365 people have died from the virus, the outbreak has also been traced back to one person: a herbalist in the remote eastern border village of Sokoma.

"She was claiming to have powers to heal Ebola. Cases from Guinea were crossing into Sierra Leone for treatment," Mohamed Vandi, the top medical official in the hard-hit district of Kenema said.

Given the extent of the crisis, the WHO has authorized largely untested treatments, including ZMapp and the Canadian-made VSV-EBOV vaccine, whose possible side effects on humans are not known.

Three doctors in Liberia who had been given the experimental US-made ZMapp are reportedly responding to the treatment.

Countries throughout Africa and beyond remain on high alert, however, with the Equatorial Guinea airline, Ceiba Intercontinental, the latest to suspend flights to the whole region.