Ebola spreading quickly in rural Sierra Leone

[bananas]

Source: Raidió Teilifís Éireann

Ebola is spreading up to nine times faster in parts of Sierra Leone than two months ago, a report by the Africa Governance Initiative said.

"Whilst new cases appear to have slowed in Liberia, Ebola is continuing to spread frighteningly quickly in parts of Sierra Leone," the AGI report said.

On average, 12 new cases a day were seen in the rural areas surrounding Freetown in late October, compared with 1.3 cases in early September, the report said, a nine fold increase.

Transmission was also increasing rapidly in the capital Freetown, with the average number of daily cases six times higher than two months ago.

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Read more: http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/1102/656354-ebola/

[Zorra]

1. Well over 200 reported new cases per day in Sierra Leone.

According to stats here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa#Timeline_of_reported_cases_and_deaths

[suffragette]

2. Increasing despite the massive 3 day quarantine in September

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/world/africa/sierra-leone-to-impose-widespread-ebola-quarantine.html

DAKAR, Senegal — With West African governments increasingly desperate to contain an ever-quickening Ebola epidemic, Sierra Leone has decreed a stringent new measure confining residents to their homes later this month.

For three days, from Sept. 19 to Sept. 21, “everybody is expected to stay indoors” as 7,000 teams of health and community workers go door to door to root out hidden Ebola patients, a government spokesman, Abdulai Bayraytay, said Saturday from the capital, Freetown. The military and the police will enforce the measure, Mr. Bayraytay added.

There was a report in early October about a rapid spike in deaths:
http://www.dw.de/sierra-leone-reports-rise-in-ebola-deaths/a-17978924

Ebola has claimed 678 lives in Sierra Leone, officials in the West African country's capital Freetown reported on Sunday. The figure is a significant increase on the 557 deaths the health ministry reported the day before.
Last week, Sierra Leone communicated to the World Health Organization (WHO) that there had been 575 Ebola deaths and 48 more cases where Ebola may have been the cause of death - a total of 632.
The figures have, however, caused some confusion because the health ministry reported 557 deaths on Saturday, implying that there were 121 more cases between Saturday and Sunday. The numbers have not yet been verified by the WHO.

And now these new reports about the continuing increase. It's clear more help is needed there and that different tactics need to be employed.
I hope more help will be given and soon.

[Marrah_G]

3. It's the small rural villages that are always at the most risk

They don't have local access to modern medicine and they have many traditions/superstitions around burial preparation etc. So the family cares for them and the village/family touch the dead body before burial, etc.