When a starving Ebola
patient escaped from a treatment centre in Monrovia and staggered through a
crowded market in search of food, by standers who scattered in his path voiced
their anger not at him but at Liberia's president.
To many in this impoverished West African country, President
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's government has not done enough to protect them from the
deadly virus.
Ebola has killed more than1,000 people in Liberia since its
arrival six months ago. Across West Africa, the death toll from the world's
worst Ebola outbreak has surpassed 1,900.
Panicked residents said the patient was the fifth to escape in
recent weeks from the understaffed ELWA hospital. Dozens watched anxiously as
workers in protective clothes bundled the struggling patient into a truck and
drove him back.
"The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no
water," said one terrified woman in the crowd. "The government need
to do more. Let Ellen Johnson Sirleaf do more!"
A Noble Peace Prize winner for her work on women's rights,
Johnson Sirleaf had made gradual progress before the epidemic in rebuilding
Liberia after a 1989-2003 civil war.
She now seems destined, however, to spend the last two years of
her presidency dealing with the fallout from Ebola.
Feted internationally since she became Africa's first female
head of state nine years ago, Johnson Sirleaf's reputation at home has been
dogged by a slow improvement in living standards .Some critics saying she is
out of touch with poor Liberians.
The 75-year-old former World Bank official now faces mounting
anger over her handling of Ebola. Her government has been denounced for causing
food shortages by imposing quarantine on affected communities, while healthcare
workers have walked out on strike after several of their colleagues died.
The president has also faced criticism for sending troops to
quell protests in the ocean-front West Point slum of Monrovia. A15-year-old boy
was fatally shot after soldiers opened fire on a crowd trying to break out of a
quarantine there.
Opponents have called for Johnson Sirleaf to resign, but her
government has said it is doing everything possible, given the scant resources
at its disposal.
"Care and attention should be given to helping people who
need it the most and we can get into the politics later," Information
Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters. "We're in a better position than we
were several weeks ago in this fight."
Johnson Sirleaf has taken bold steps. Declaring a state of
national emergency last month, she closed schools to prevent them becoming
breeding grounds for infection, and sent home all non-essential government
staff.
But the disease is far outpacing efforts to control it. Medical
charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said this week a further 800 Ebola beds
were needed in Monrovia alone, and it called for foreign military teams to be
deployed.
"Localised unrest and public criticism of government
failures look set to increase as the health situation worsens and the
authorities fail to find adequate responses," warned Roddy Barclay of
consultancy Control Risks.
NO CLEAR STRATEGY
Tom Frieden, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), warned this week after a visit to the region that the
outbreak was gathering pace and threatened the stability of fragile West
African nations.
Although the epidemic was detected deep in the forests of
neighbouring Guinea in March, Liberia now accounts for more than half the 1,900
people who have died from the virus, which has also struck Sierra Leone,
Senegal and Nigeria.
"The government was not clear on how to engage the
outbreak," said Francis Colee, an environmentalist living in Monrovia, who
said Liberia had reacted poorly compared with its neighbours. "The
government's response mechanism has been very disappointing."
Liberia is not the only government to face criticism as health
systems have buckled. In Sierra Leone, struggling to recover from its own
1991-2001 civil war, frustration has mounted at the government's handling of
the crisis. After strikes by healthcare workers, President Ernest Bai Koroma
dismissed his health minister last month.
Johnson Sirleaf similarly sought to quell criticism by
dismissing senior officials who failed to report for work.
For Barclay of Control Risk, recognition that the opposition
cannot offer better alternatives due to Liberia's weak institutions, meant
popular anger was unlikely to bubble over.
"Despite causing significant turbulence, such trends are
unlikely to destabilise government or fundamentally alter the balance of
power," he said.
A major challenge has been informing a poorly educated
population about a disease which had never before struck in West Africa. Burial
traditions of washing the dead by hand have fuelled the spread of the highly
contagious disease but with many citizens unable to read, education campaigns
have been slow to reach their mark.
"People are still not aware of how the virus can spread,
"Emmanuel Geayon, a university student.
"The Ebola messages and awareness campaign are not in the
vernacular."
Campaigns have also been dogged by deeply engrained mistrust of
the political elite. Rumours had circulated early in the outbreak that Ebola
was a myth and politicians were poisoning wells in Monrovia to win access to
more aid money.
On the muddy streets of rain-soaked Monrovia, billboards now
proclaim "Ebola is Real". On the radio, songs describe the symptoms
of the disease and how to avoid infection.
The World Health Organization has warned that up to 20,000people
may be affected before the outbreak ends. It has laid out a $490 million
roadmap for tackling the outbreak but support from foreign donors has been slow
to arrive.
"In a way, we feel saddened by the response," Johnson
Sirleaf told CNN in an interview.
The president has admitted that Liberia - which had only
50doctors for its 4.5 million people on the eve of the outbreak -does not have
the resources to cope.
Even in hospitals in Monrovia, a scarcity of gloves and
protective clothing has put doctors at risk when treating patients - and in
rural clinics resources are even scarcer. Several top emergency doctors have
died in their duties.
Johnson Sirleaf apologised last month for the high death toll
among healthcare workers, and pledged more money for ambulances and new
treatment centres.
But the suspension of flights by international airlines and the
closure of borders by neighbouring states has complicated efforts to respond.
"How do we get in the kinds of supplies that we need? How
do we get experts to come to our country? Is that African solidarity?"
Information Minister Brown asked.
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