Troops deployed to fight deadly ebola outbreak

Hundreds of troops have been deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia under an emergency plan to fight the worst outbreak of the deadly ebola virus, which has killed more than 826 people across West Africa.

Panic among local communities, which have attacked health workers and threatened to burn down isolation wards, prompted regional governments to impose tough measures last week, including the closure of schools and quarantine of the remote forest region hardest hit by the disease.

The virus, which has no known cure, has infected more than 1,400 people in its first outbreak in West Africa, straining the capacity of under-funded health systems and aid groups to breaking point.

The number of cases is also creeping steadily higher in Guinea, where the outbreak originated in February. And Nigeria’s megacity of Lagos yesterday recorded its second case of ebola in a doctor who treated US victim Patrick Sawyer.

Long convoys of military trucks ferried troops and medical workers yesterday to Sierra Leone’s far east, where the density of cases is highest. Military spokesman Colonel Michael Samoura said the operation involved 750 military personnel.

Troops will gather in the southeastern town of Bo before travelling to isolated communities to implement quarantines, he added.

In neighbouring Liberia, president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and ministers held a crisis meeting on putting in place a series of anti-Ebola measures as police contained infected communities in the northern Lofa county.

Police were setting up checkpoints and roadblocks for key entrance and exit points to those infected communities and every resident would be stopped. Troops were fanning out across Liberia to help to deal with the emergency.

“The situation will probably get worse before it gets better,” Liberian information minister Lewis Brown told Reuters. “We are over- stretched. We need resources.” The World Health Organisation (WHO) plans to launch a $100m (€74.5m) response plan and is holding urgent talks with donors and agencies to increase resources. WHO chief Margaret Chan warned regional leaders that ebola was outpacing their efforts to contain it and warned of “catastrophic” consequences if the situation deteriorated.

Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières has only a small team in Liberia and says it does not have the capacity to increase it.

The situation is exacerbated by the departure of some international staff following the infection of two US staff of the Samaritan’s Purse charity in Liberia. One, Kent Brantly, was improving on Sunday after being flown back to the US for care.

The second, Nancy Writebol, was expected to arrive back in the US today.

Highly contagious, the deadliest strain of the virus can kill up to 90% of those infected, though in the current outbreak, the rate is around 55%. Officials seeking to bury victims faced protests at a burial site in a suburb of Monrovia and about 25 soldiers were called in to guard the site. Director of Liberian National Police Chris Massaquoi said last week that troops would place forces in areas where crowds had previously stoned health workers. He said all protests were forbidden.