{"id":38209,"date":"2014-08-10T11:52:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T11:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=38209"},"modified":"2014-08-10T11:52:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T11:52:27","slug":"ebola-virus-liberia-health-system-falling-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=38209","title":{"rendered":"Ebola virus: Liberia health system ‘falling apart’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) has told the BBC that Liberia’s medical services have been completely overwhelmed by the Ebola outbreak.<\/p>\n

The MSF co-ordinator in Liberia said official figures were “under-representing the reality”, and that the health system was “falling apart”.<\/p>\n

Nearly 1,000 people have died and 1,800 have become infected in West Africa.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, neighbouring Guinea has denied earlier reports that it had sealed its borders.<\/p>\n

On Saturday Liberian police broke up a protest against the government’s response.<\/p>\n

The Ebola outbreak – the worst ever – is centred on Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, but has spread to other countries in recent months.<\/p>\n

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that the virus was a global health emergency.<\/p>\n

\"LiberianThe outbreak has killed almost 1,000 people<\/div>\n

The MSF co-ordinator for Liberia, Lindis Hurum, told the BBC: “Our capacity is stretched beyond anything that we ever done before in regards to ebola response.”<\/p>\n

She said five of the biggest hospitals in the capital Monrovia had closed for more than a week.<\/p>\n

“Some of them have now started to re-open but there are other hospitals in other counties that are just abandoned by the staff.<\/p>\n

“We are definitely seeing the whole health care system that is falling apart.”<\/p>\n

‘Inaccurate’ information<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Saturday demonstrators in Liberia blocked a highway, saying authorities had not been collecting the bodies of some victims.<\/p>\n

The army was then deployed to restrict movement, particularly from the worst-affected provinces to the capital.<\/p>\n

In Guinea, the health minister on Saturday said the borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone had been closed to prevent infected people crossing into the country.<\/p>\n

However, state television later said: “Guinea has not closed its borders with Sierra Leone or with Liberia. It’s rather that we have taken health measures at the border posts.”<\/p>\n

A government source told Reuters that the minister who made the original announcement had not been in possession of accurate information.<\/p>\n

The Ebola virus was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976. It is transmitted between humans through bodily fluids.<\/p>\n

Animals such as fruit bats carry the virus, which can be transmitted to humans through contact with blood or consumption of bushmeat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) has told the BBC that Liberia’s medical services have been completely overwhelmed by the Ebola outbreak. The MSF co-ordinator in Liberia said official figures were “under-representing the reality”, and that the health system was “falling apart”. Nearly 1,000 people have died and 1,800 have become infected in West Africa. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-38209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}