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SEVENTEEN Ebola patients in Liberia who fled a quarantine centre after it was attacked by club-wielding youths were missing yesterday, striking a fresh blow to efforts to contain the deadly virus.
The attack on the Monrovia centre on Sunday (AEST) highlighted the challenge faced by authorities battling the epidemic that has killed 1,145 people since it erupted in West Africa early this year, spreading panic among local populations.

Doctors and nurses are not only fighting the disease but a deep mistrust in communities often in the thrall of wild rumours that the virus was invented by the West or is a hoax.

“They broke down the door and looted the place. The patients have all gone,” said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the raid in the Liberian capital’s densely populated West Point slum.

The attackers, mostly young men armed with clubs, shouted insults about President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and yelled “there’s no Ebola”, she said, adding nurses had also fled the centre.

A Health Ministry official said the youths took away medicines, mattresses and bedding from the high school that had been turned into an isolation centre to deal with the virus.

Some of the looted items were stained with blood, vomit and ­excrement, said Richard Kieh, who lives in the area.
“All between the houses you could see people fleeing with items looted from the patients,” an official said, adding he now feared “the whole of West Point will be infected”.

The head of the Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams, said the unit housed 29 patients who “had all tested positive for Ebola” and were receiving preliminary treatment before being taken to hospital.

“Of the 29 patients, 17 fled last night (after the assault). Nine died four days ago and three others were yesterday taken by force by their relatives” from the centre, he said.

Fallah Boima’s son was admitted to the ward four days ago, and seemed to be doing well, but when the distraught father arrived for his daily visit on Sunday his son was nowhere to be seen. “The ­security man told me that I cannot enter because the people here attacked the place,” Boima said. “I don’t know where he is and I am very confused. He has not called me since he left the camp. Now that the nurses have all left, how will I know where my son is?”

In Monrovia, residents had ­opposed the quarantine centre, set up by health authorities in a part of the capital seen as an epicentre of the outbreak.

“We told them not to (build) their camp here. They didn’t listen to us,” said a resident. “This Ebola business, we don’t believe it.”
Neighbouring Sierra Leone has also battled to get patients to comply with quarantine measures as myths spread about the virus. Ebola is spread by contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids, such as sweat and blood, and no cure is available.

Victims in their final days are wracked by agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorrhaging described as “bleeding out” as vital organs break down.

Ebola kills more than half of the people it infects. It is highly infectious but not particularly contagious, meaning that once you are exposed, your chances of ­escaping the fever are extremely low. But when patients are caught early, given paracetamol for their fevers, kept rehydrated and nourished, their chances of survival increase dramatically. —AFP/AP.