A safe burial in Sierra Leone. Yahoo/AFP.
There are still dozens of unsafe burials in Sierra Leone and Guinea for Ebola victims, despite efforts to combat the practice and the obvious risk. Yahoo/AFP. In Guinea 39 unsafe burials occurred last week with 45 recorded in Sierra Leone. Though new cases dropped slightly, with 52 new cases in Guinea and 74 in Sierra Leone, concerns are being raised about both the burials and the fact that some people are still not seeking treatment. 40 of the new cases in each country were only discovered after the victims were already dead. Not only could some of these deaths been prevented, these undiscovered cases put whole communities at risk. In Liberia, there were only two new cases, but a marked increase in security incidents due to rumors that vaccines were causing Ebola.
My Comment:
This outbreak should be over by now. And if people were sane, it would be. The fact that they are still having unsafe burials 14 months into this outbreak is beyond belief. At this point, we are very aware of how and why this virus spreads, and unsafe burial practices are a huge cause of the disease. But either people don't know that is how it spreads, don't care about the risks, or, most disturbingly, don't believe that that is how the virus spreads. Education can fix the first problem but I have no idea how to fix the second and third ones. Some people just don't want to be helped.
That's not even the end of it. From what I understand the "security incidents" in Liberia are probably attacks on health workers because they were giving out vaccines. Vaccines do not cause Ebola. How anyone got that idea is beyond me. Conspiracy nuts will believe anything, and yes they have those in Africa. Some people there think that Ebola is some kind of engineered virus designed to wipe out black people. If that had any truth it is doing a pretty terrible job! Of course there are going to be hucksters and other medical quacks that will push these rumors so desperate people try their "cures" that will do nothing but allow the disease to spread.
As for the outbreak itself, will it end anytime soon? I think Liberia is very close to wiping out Ebola in its borders. With only two more cases last week I expect Liberia to be Ebola free in a month or two. That's great news, even if there are idiots in that country doing everything they can to make that not happen. As for Guinea and Sierra Leone, the outlook is not nearly as good. If people are still doing stupid stuff like not going to the doctor and burying their dead the right way then the disease will stick around for months, maybe even years. If they wise up, or all the stupid people die, then it could be gone in a couple of months too.
Of course given how widespread the disease has been in the past year or so in West Africa, it is possible that Ebola has made its way back into nature. I've heard that Ebola has had a devastating impact on chimpanzees and gorillas, but the virus may have found other animals to infect that might not die as fast as humans and the great apes do. The natural hosts are thought to be bats but because of this outbreaks other species could act as hosts as well. Plus, new populations of bats may now be infected as well. With the virus still around in various animals all it would take is for one hunter to shoot an infected animal and then have contact with the blood. Then the outbreak starts up all again. Given how poorly the world handled the current outbreak, I'm not to optimistic that the next one will go any better then this one...
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