KOLO BENGOU, Guinea —

Eight youths, some armed with slingshots and machetes, stood warily alongside a rutted dirt road at an opening in the high reeds, the path to the village of Kolo Bengou.

The deadly Ebola virus is believed to have infected several people in the village, and the youths were blocking the path to prevent health workers from entering.
“We don’t want any visitors,” said their leader, Faya Iroundouno, 17, president of Kolo Bengou’s youth league. “We don’t want any contact with anyone.” The others nodded in agreement and fiddled with their slingshots.
Singling out the international aid group Doctors Without Borders, Mr. Iroundouno continued, “Wherever those people have passed, the communities have been hit by illness.”

Health workers here say they are now battling two enemies: the unprecedented Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 660 peoplein four countries since it was first detected in March, and fear, which has produced growing hostility toward outside help. On Friday alone, health authorities in Guinea confirmed 14 new cases of the disease.
Workers and officials, blamed by panicked populations for spreading the virus, have been threatened with knives, stones and machetes, their vehicles sometimes surrounded by hostile mobs.

Log barriers across narrow dirt roads block medical teams from reaching villages where the virus is suspected. Sick and dead villagers, cut off from help, are infecting others.
“This is very unusual, that we are not trusted,” said Marc Poncin, the emergency coordinator in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders, the main group fighting the disease here. “We’re not stopping the epidemic.”
Efforts to monitor it are grinding to a halt because of “intimidation,” he said.

People appear to have more confidence in witch doctors.
Health officials say the epidemic is out of control, moving back and forth across the porous borders of Guinea and neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia — often on the backs of the cheap motorcycles that ply the roads of this region of green hills and dense forest — infiltrating the lively open-air markets, overwhelming weak health facilities and decimating villages. It was in this rural area, 400 miles over bad roads from Guinea’s capital, Conakry, where the outbreak was first spotted, and where it has hit hardest. More than 80 percent of those infected have died in this region, and Guinea has recorded more than twice as many deaths as the other countries.

In Koundony, more than one-eighth of the population, including the headman, are dead; many others have fled.
There is no known cure for the virus, which causes raging fever, vomiting, diarrhea and uncontrolled bleeding in about half the cases and up to 90 percent of the time, rapid death. Merely touching an infected person, or the body of a victim, is dangerous; coming into contact with blood, vomit or feces can be deadly.

Now the fear of aid workers, principally from Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross, is helping to spread the disease, health officials say, creating a secondary crisis. Villagers flee at the sight of a Red Cross truck. When a Westerner passes, villagers cry out, “Ebola, Ebola!” and run away.

This month, Doctors Without Borders classified 12 villages in Guinea as “red,” meaning they might harbor Ebola but were inaccessible for safety reasons.
As recently as April, the epidemic seemed to be under control. But in the past two weeks, its center appeared to have shifted across the border to Sierra Leone, where most of the new dead were being recorded. The sick are being hidden and the dead buried, without any protection.
Last week, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported that its lead doctor fighting Ebola had contracted the disease, and the virus had spread to a fourth country, with a confirmed fatality in Nigeria. Over the weekend, an aid organization working in Liberia, Samaritan’s Purse, said that two Americans, a doctor who was treating Ebola patients and an aid worker on a case management team, had tested positive for the virus. And the Liberian government said Sunday that one of its most high-profile doctors had died of Ebola, according to The Associated Press.
Back in Guinea, in the village of Wabengou, residents placed a tree in the road to block outsiders. They also attacked an official delegation from Conakry, rushing its cars, banging on the vehicles and brandishing machetes, according to Doctors Without Borders.
“We don’t want them in there at all,” said Wabengou’s chief, Marcel Dambadounou. “We don’t accept their presence at all. They are the transporters of the virus in these communities.”
He was surrounded by grim-looking men from Wabengou, standing at a crossroads on the way to his village; none of them demurred.
“We are absolutely afraid, and that’s why we are avoiding contact with everybody,” he said, “the whole world.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/world/africa/ebola-epidemic-west-africa-guinea.html?ref=africa&_r=1#story-continues-1

Ignorance is bliss. The virus is really spreading.
Be afraid, everyone. Be very afraid

Leopantro: Ignorance is bliss. The virus is really spreading.
Be afraid, everyone. Be very afraid

But the approach to the situation shouldn't be this barbaric.

the fear oe ebola virus is the begining of....

Honestly the headlines crack my ribs.

as backwards as Nigeria is, we r still miles ahead of some pepo. if the disease resurfaces in Nigeria I'm very sure its spread ll b effectively curtailed

theplanmaker: as backwards as Nigeria is, we r still miles ahead of some pepo. if the disease resurfaces in Nigeria I'm very sure its spread ll b effectively curtailed

Do not so sure. How do you keep someone against his will for 21 days? Fake pastors and traditional doctors would have a field day. You would be surprised what fear is capable of doing to do called intelligent people

Nigeria in the 1708s I guess

i feel their pain. But can this really stop d spread?

.

it does not change ur status. better stay and get tested

Monkeys or primates have being existing for millennium and no deadly virus outbreak. Sometimes, I wonder if Ebola virus is another research gone wrong or perhaps We are use for scientific experiment. You have to be careful of what you believe.

Illiteracy is a virus. Let them just keep it to themselves in that Guinea.

Ignorance is a disease,,infact illiteracy na bastard

imagine the village leader saying "we don't want any visitor" and the rest nodding their head in agreement.
Black people in black world..smh

9ja na beta place jare

ebola may God help us
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ignorance is a disease...
ebola is a worse disease

O God, so at last world wan end.

Those villagers are darn funny menh. Screaming Ebola Ebola at the sight of a white man....gotta try it here this week.

lol


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Ebele is a very dangerous disease, that if not tackle in time will transform into EBOLA .

theplanmaker: as backwards as Nigeria is, we r still miles ahead of some pepo. if the disease resurfaces in Nigeria I'm very sure its spread ll b effectively curtailed

Polio?

h

Really?

Thanks to people like baba AWOLOWO who helped to educate our fathers back then, launching us from such abyss of ignorance as those Guineans.

Hehehehe!

Ebolakunle don dey fear everybody

Well, no problem. Let them continue blocking their village. Let it kuku wipe them all out until it burns itself out in their village and dies a natural death.

Very simple.

If they are preventing the health workers from gaining access to their villages, they should also prevent their infected from coming out from the village.

coolzeal: Monkeys or primates have being existing for millennium and no deadly virus outbreak. Sometimes, I wonder if Ebola virus is another research gone wrong or perhaps We are use for scientific experiment. You have to be careful of what you believe.

I dont like this reasoning from a Nigerian in the 21st century. Anyway, this is Africa!!!

What a pitiable state of mind,who will emancipate dis pple from d clutch of illiteracy,chei illiteracy is really a deadlier bacteria,fungi and virus.

Lilprocess: Ebele is a very dangerous disease, that if not tackle in time will transform into EBOLA .

Very true!

it might be that those doctors where using them
as experiment o.
Nigerian Ebola disease carrier is dead. I mean d medical official that was infected, he was suppose to spread it in our country.
the villagers know what they are doing o.
GOD HELP 9JA.