How You Can Die From Ebola Without Getting It

Julia Belluz explains that Sierra Leone is “imposing mandatory lockdowns on its citizens.” She provides the above chart showing the extent of the devastation:

The districts where Ebola is believed to be moving fast — Port Loko, Bombali, Moyamba — are now isolated. People won’t be able to leave their homes or go to school or work. During these periods, government and public-health officials will go door to door, educating people about Ebola and trying to identify patients who should be brought to containment facilities. Officials in Sierra Leone are worried that many Ebola victims are either going underground or simply unable to access care. And the death toll continues to surge — with nearly 600 estimated Ebola deaths in Sierra Leone this year.

Adam Taylor sees “numerous signs that pregnant women in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea could be dying due to Ebola without ever getting the disease”:

Maternity hospitals are fearful of taking women in due to the risk of catching Ebola from a sick patient. That fear is understandable. Hundreds of health-care workers have been infected with Ebola recently, and many were infected by the patients they treat.

Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general for polio and emergencies at the World Health Organization, said that at first, most health workers who died were people working in “poorly run Ebola treatment centers.” However, as the disease spread, it began to affect the broader health community. “Now, if you look at [health-care workers infected with Ebola], they’re somebody who is delivering a baby in a clinic that had nothing to do with Ebola,” Aylward explained. The shift has affected both local and foreign doctors: Rick Sacra, one of the American doctors who contracted Ebola, was treating pregnant women in Liberia when he became infected (he has since made a full recovery).

Worse still, the fear of Ebola infection at medical facilities cuts both ways. Many pregnant women who need treatment are too scared to head to a health center, fearing a visit to a medical facility will actually increase their chance of catching Ebola. In countries where maternal mortality rates are so high than almost one out of every hundred women die, such a lack of treatment can have a deadly impact.

We featured one of those women here.