Liberia’s president warned Monday that anyone caught hiding suspected Ebola patients will be prosecuted.<\/p>\n
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s\u00a0<\/span>comments on Monday dispelled rumors in Liberia that the outbreak isn’t real.<\/p>\n Her warning\u00a0came just days after Sierra Leone issued a similar warning, saying some patients had discharged themselves from the hospital and had gone into hiding.<\/p>\n Sirleaf expressed concern that some patients had been kept in homes and churches instead of receiving medical attention.<\/p>\n “Let this warning go out: Anyone found or reported to be holding suspected Ebola cases in homes or prayer houses can be prosecuted under the law of Liberia,” Sirleaf said.<\/p>\n Kenema, on the frontline of Sierra Leone’s fight against Ebola, is located in the diamond-rich east. It is\u00a0the West African nation’s third largest city.<\/p>\n Health workers have encountered resistance throughout the region ever since Ebola cases were first confirmed in March, and some have even been attacked.<\/p>\n At the Moala checkpoint on the road to Liberia, masked health workers take the temperature of all travelers to monitor for anyone who might be carrying a fever.<\/p>\n But many still put faith in traditional methods.<\/p>\n At the same Moala checkpoint, police and soldiers tied herbal rope bracelets around travellers’ wrists, telling them a local traditional healer had been told in a dream that doing so could ward off Ebola.<\/p>\n The outbreak of the disease in West Africa is already the deadliest on record, with 635 cases and 367 fatalities, according to the latest World Health Organization numbers. A majority of the deaths \u2014 280 \u2014 have been in Guinea where cases were first reported.<\/p>\n In an update released Monday, Liberia’s health ministry said the country had recorded 49 deaths as a result of Ebola, 26 of which were confirmed by laboratory tests.<\/p>\n There is no cure for the deadly disease which has an incubation period of two to 21 days and starts with fever and fatigue before descending into headaches, vomiting, violent diarrhea and then multiple organ failure and massive internal bleeding.<\/p>\n The deadly Ebola virus could solve France’s immigration problems “in three months”, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder and honorary president of France’s far-Right Front National, has said.<\/p>\n Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says Ebola is “out of control”, located in at least 60 places across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liberia’s president warned Monday that anyone caught hiding suspected Ebola patients will be prosecuted. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s\u00a0comments on Monday dispelled rumors in Liberia that the outbreak isn’t real. Her warning\u00a0came just days after Sierra Leone issued a similar warning, saying some patients had discharged themselves from the hospital and had gone into hiding. Sirleaf expressed … Continue reading “Hiding Ebola patients a misdeed warns president”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[9128,9346,1410,2474],"class_list":["post-14505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-ebola","tag-ellen-johnson-sirleaf","tag-liberia","tag-sierra-leone"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14505"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14508,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14505\/revisions\/14508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}