Soldiers deployed to contain Ebola outbreak

[cronus]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... eria-ebola

Soldiers deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia to contain Ebola outbreak

Hundreds of soldiers have been deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia in an attempt to quarantine the remote villages at the centre of the Ebola outbreak, as three new cases were discovered in Nigeria and authorities in Saudi Arabia said a man was being tested for suspected infection.

The Saudi health ministry said a man in his 40s who had recently returned from Sierra Leone had shown symptoms of viral haemorrhagic fever and was being treated was at a specialist hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The patient is in isolation and blood samples are being tested.

As the epidemic entered its seventh month, 700 troops in Sierra Leone began setting up roadblocks to ensure that only health personnel could move in and out of the hardest-hit communities. They include two eastern districts where health workers have sometimes been attacked by residents who fear that treatment centres are causing Ebola to spread.

Military spokesperson Yayah Brima said food and medical supplies would be ferried in by convoys, and 50 military nurses would provide medical assistance to the soldiers.

Poor enforcement and medical practices in remote areas, combined with high volumes of cross-border travel, have fuelled the outbreak, which has so far claimed 887 lives. Ebola is spread through contact with the bodily fluids of infected patients, bush meat and surfaces.

"Border controls alone give a false sense of security," said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who oversaw the global response to the Sars outbreak in 2003. "You cannot keep Ebola out using only that because people can still get to places where there aren't controls."

(continued, not enough soldiers to quarantine sparsely and widely spread out villages - enough for extermination though?)