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Liberian medical personal adminster the new Ebola vaccines.
The country of Sierra Leone was put on quarantine Friday because of the Ebola epidemic. The quarantine will last three days until this Monday. Sierra Leone’s President, Ernest Koroma asked all citizens to stay home for three days in order to curb the spread of the Ebola virus. Thirty-three new cases of the Ebola virus were confirmed in Sierra Leone last week, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). There has been an increase in reported cases recently, with a third of the cases centered in the capital city of Freetown. The quarantine will help health workers assess the spread of the disease, in order to quarantine only those believed to have been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus.
Health specialist are holding out for hope, where two experimental vaccines are being administered in Liberia to combat the virus. Over 12,000 people in Sierra Leone have been infected by the deadly Ebola virus, which has already caused the death of over 10,000 people world wide since the epidemic started in the region. Sierra Leone suffers from continual epidemic outbreaks of other diseases, including: cholera, yellow fever, meningitis and malaria. The Ebola epidemic has hit the country the hardest.
Founded by the British as a haven for former slaves, Sierra Leone has seen many transformations through the years. All the freedoms settlers gained in coming to this new land were never fully granted to women. Sierra Leone today is a primarily Muslim nation, close to 40 percent of married women are in polygamist marriages, 88% of all women in Sierra Leone have undergone female genital mutilation, and many women marry very young while teenagers. Medical accessibility is a difficulty for the population; Sierra Leone was estimated as having the 11th highest infant mortality rate in the world.
One of the most difficult issues for health workers is trying to reach the population that may be infected. Many people that have been exposed to the Ebola virus do not want to go into clinics to be tested out of fear of a positive diagnosis.Oftentimes health workers are not called in until the victims are already dead..
