Ebola in Makeni

As most of you know, I was in Sierra Leone a couple years ago and helped set up a community based organization. We continue to try to bring change to the region we work in, but everything has been put on hold right now due to the ebola outbreak. I wanted to share a first hand account of how dire the situation is there from my partner there:

"The situation in Sierra Leone is getting worse every day. Worse is that the outbreak in most Cities in Sierra Leone is very much high that it has taken government concentration and those rural communities are getting extremely vulnerable. on Saturday the Magbenteh Community Hospital, I believe we visited there when you came to Sierra Leone (the hospital built with the Hydroform bricks) was quarantined after a suspected case of Ebola, 6 nurses and 21 patient where suspected and all 6 nurses positive, 11 patient positive after the test result was out. on Monday yesterday three nurses already dead and two patient dead.

I am calling on your urgent intervention to complement government effort in the fight against Ebola. The virus is almost all in the District in Sierra Leone now except Koinadugu District. The other truth is that the disease have spread so wide that government cannot handle it now and some reports on Ebola are not made known to government because people do not want their relatives to be buried like poppers in plastics.

Two Hospital facilities in Makeni have already been closed because of the intense outbreak there. All our lives are at risk, traveling have been restricted, high inflation of food commodities, and most homes go with only one meal a day, imagine a country whose majority population goes with less than $1UD a day. everything is horrible here."

Heartbreaking......