Liberians barricaded in slums to contain Ebola

RIOT police and soldiers acting on their President’s orders used scrap wood and barbed wire to seal off 50,000 people inside their Liberian slum yesterday to contain the Ebola outbreak that has killed 1350 people across West Africa.

Hundreds of slum residents clashed with the gunmen, furious at being blamed and isolated by a government that has failed to quickly collect dead bodies from the streets. One 15-year-old boy was injured trying to cross the barbed wire as security forces fired into the air to disperse the crowd.

The World Health Organisation said the death toll was rising most quickly in Liberia, which now accounts for at least 576 of the fatalities.

At least 2473 people have fallen ill across West Africa. The UN health agency warned of short­ages of food, water and other essential supplies in West Africa’s population centres. West Point is a densely populated slum surrounded by floating sewage that occupies an 800m-long peninsula in Liberia’s seaside capital.

Drinking water is carted in on wheelbarrows. Now many of the market’s traders are stuck inside, prices have doubled and “the community is in disarray”, slum resident Richard Kieh said.

“Why are you ill-treating people like this? How can we take this kind of government to be peaceful? ‘’ he asked.

“It is not fair — we are human,” complained another resident, Mohamed Fahnbulleh.

AP