Sierra Leone has declared on Friday August 22 that attempting to hide people suffering from Ebola is punishable by up to two years in prison. The government hopes that this will incentivize people to stop harboring family members inflicted with the disease and bring a stop to the spread of Ebola, which has reached epidemic levels in Africa.
The stigma associated with having someone in a family be infected with Ebola can be quite bad. However, isolating and quarantining patients is important for stopping the spread of the disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that the number of people infected with Ebola has been severely underestimated because of family members hiding the infected.
The new law is an amendment to Sierra Leone's 1960 Public Health Act. Lawmaker Ansumana Jaiah Kaikai said that residents of Sierra Leone have not been cooperating fully with the government on measures to stop the spread of Ebola. He hoped that the risk of facing jail time would show people that the government is serious about cracking down on the disease. Towns have been resisting the creation of centers to isolate patients with Ebola, for example, he said.
"This amendment seeks to address these emerging bottlenecks," he said.
So far, since the Ebola outbreak began, Sierra Leone has reported 910 cases of infection and 392 deaths from Ebola, in a figure given by the WHO on Friday August 22. The WHO reported on Friday a total 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths from Ebola in all of Africa. However, the WHO guessed that the number of infections was actually much higher. It is hard to tell with families refusing to come forward when their family members get infected. The WHO said that there is an "invisible caseload" of Ebola patients not yet seen by hospitals. This is also a problem in Liberia, another country hit hard by the disease.
Other countries in Africa have turned away travel from the four countries where Ebola has been spotted. Ivory Coast has just closed its borders to Guinea and Liberia, they announced late on Friday. The countries Gabon, Senegal, South Africa and Cameroon also closed travel to countries with Ebola outbreaks earlier on in this week.
Earlier this month, a patient in California tested negative for Ebola after visiting the hospital for symptoms similar to the disease. The President of Liberia quarantined two towns earlier this week after residents stormed a quarantine center, resulting in Ebola patients mingling with healthy people.
