SOURCE: FRONT PAGE AFRICA Written by Wade C. L. Williams, wade.wiliams@frontpageafricaonline Monrovia - The scene in the West Point area Liberia’s biggest slum community was one of disbelief as some residents still grappling to come to terms of the events of late Saturday afternoon when some residents of the community stormed and looted an isolated center where suspected Ebola patients were being held. FrontPageAfrica has gathered that on Saturday the scene was one of chaos as residents ran amok as others set up roadblocks as news spread that the ministry of health was moving another Ebola patient into the center. But it turned out that it was food and mattresses that were being brought in to the sick that have been isolated from the rest of the world. But this move by the ministry caused some tension and others saw it as an opportunity to cause chaos. Stones began to fly according to eyewitnesses; one vehicle belonging to the Liberia National Police, which was providing backup, was hit and the LNP was forced to retreat. As the police retreated the area became vulnerable, according to eyewitnesses and the looters set in and started to bring out the patients, rice, mattresses, blankets, not even afraid to touch the sick. I saw sick people being taken out of the Ebola Center by West Pointers. They were actually holding them; some took them home to care for them,” Moses Teah a resident of the area told FrontPageAfrica in utter disbelief on Sunday morning. “As I speak the police station is deserted, there is no security now in West Point. I said to myself what a place. West Point people really shocked me yesterday. Sources say seventeen (17) suspected and some confirmed Ebola patients escaped the isolation center, but the Health Ministry at a news conference in Monrovia told journalists that the center was home to close to 30 patients who were under supervision as they were showing signs of the disease but had not been confirmed of the deadly Ebola virus. “We did open something we describe as a holding unit; this is a concept that came about because of the outflow of patients in the community and so the commissioner noticed that people were buried secretly in the West Point Area,” said Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant minister for health. “Let it be known that the patients that were in there were suspects because of the presentation of signs and symptoms of the disease. We also know that there is a thin line between the signs and symptoms of Ebola and the signs and symptoms of other diseases like Malaria, Typhoid, diarrhea and the rest of them.” Women beckon to the family of Makasha Kroma, who was waiting at the transit facility for confirmation she had Ebola. John Moore / Getty Images He said some of the residents of the area looted the place because they saw health workers taking relief items into the Isolation center that had been set up in a Monrovia Consolidated School System MCSS school in the area. He confirmed reports that the patients had escaped the area, leaving the facility empty. “When the community saw we were carrying supplies, food and beddings for those people, some young people got agitated and jumped in the area and scared away those patients there,” he said. “Those people the bulk of them, close to 80 to 90 percent live in that community- from West Point. So, they have moved back to the houses that they came from.” Nyenswah said the ministry was asked by the commissioner of West Point to set up the holding facility because the area was becoming notorious to a secret burial of people who were dying of unknown causes. “They were burying people behind a river called devil island and so since people were buried secretly, the commissioner thought it wise to come in at the ministry of health so that we discuss how to respond to the situation in the West Point Area, so that it didn’t blow into a full-scale Ebola outbreak in that area,” he said. “There were patients that were suspected in that area. The MCSS Building called the Nathaniel V. Massaquoi School, opposite a church in West Point was opened by us, with the capacity of about 30 patients that were in there.” Sam Tarplah, a registered nurse who is managing the self-initiative isolation center early Saturday morning took journalists on a tour of a facility where the suspected Ebola patients were being kept in isolation. From a concrete fence and a building with half transparent windows, the suspected Ebola patients are visibly seen at the center with those who are a little stronger communicating loudly. One patient yelled: “I have been here one week, one shouted; your bring us food”, through the window of the room they were being kept in similar to the sound you hear from prisoners at the Monrovia Central Prison. Nurse Tarplah told reporters that some of the people kept at the center at the NV Massaquoi School have died and others are strongly showing the signs of the virus and told to be in isolation at home because of insufficient space at the ELWA isolation center but Nyenswah told journalists on Sunday that there were no confirmed case at the holding facility. Tarplah said, knowing the risk the presence of these Ebola suspected patients will cause the community when they at home, he decided to keep them in one location, though not in the same room. According to him, there were a total of 29 persons at the center, but none had died over the last few days. A day ago, he said one of the patients, very weak, fell on his forehead and died.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:31:21 +0000