Eight members of an Ebola Awareness team were brutally killed by the villagers in Guinea. Officials said that the victims were attacked and killed by residents using machetes and clubs.
On Thursday night, government spokesman Damantang Albert Camara said the victims had been "killed in cold blood by the villagers." Officials said that the bodies showed signs of being attacked with machetes and clubs.
The eight Ebola heath officials comprise of three health workers specifically doctors, two local officials and three journalists, were trying to raise awareness and educate local residents on the risks of the Ebola virus in a remote area of southeastern Guinea.
The Guinea Ebola Team was killed and found dead in a latrine of the village's primary school in the Nzerekore region. Guinea's government spokesperson Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters those three out of eight victims were brutally killed and had their throats slit.
The killings of the Guinea Ebola team are an example of what the outbreak conveys that the Ebola epidemic, which killed over 2,600 people, is unsettling not only public health but generally the whole society. Jackson K.P. Naimah of Doctors Without Borders, on Monrovia, Liberia told a United Nations Security Council emergency session earlier Thursday that so many patients have died and they die alone, horrified, and without their loved ones at their side.
The Ebola health team in Guinea reportedly went missing on Tuesday after villagers threw rocks on them when they arrived in the village of Wome - in southern Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first recorded. As per The Washington Post reports, a group of young folks attacked the team when they were trying to hand out information about the deadly virus.
The Guinea government sent a delegation to the village to try finding the team; however BBC reported that the delegation had misfortune acquiring access because of the blocked and destroyed bridge. A journalist told reporters that while she managed to escape, she could hear villagers looking for them while in hiding.
The perils of Ebola have been challenging to communicate in some bucolic villages, where suspicion of health workers rules. Last month, riots exploded in Nzerekore when workers reportedly tried to spray the local market leading residents to believe they were truly spreading the virus themselves.
Meanwhile, as Ebola continues to rip through West Africa, the United Nations announced on Thursday to deploy an exceptional mission to combat the virus in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone - the three worst-hit countries. The action came just as the UN Security Council called the outbreak "a threat to international peace and security."
Six people have been arrested and the village is now reportedly deserted. The motive for the killings of the Guinea Ebola team has not been confirmed, but the BBC's Makeme Bamba reported that many villagers reproach the health workers of spreading the disease while others doubt the existence of the disease to be real.
The World Health Organization reported today that the death toll for Ebola in West Africa has reached 2,630 and over 700 new Ebola cases have emerged in the area in just a week, showing that the outbreak was accelerating. It was also reported that there had been over 5,300 total cases and half of those were recorded in the past three weeks.
After the killings of the Guinea Ebola team, French President Francois Hollande said that France was creating a military hospital in Guinea as part of his country's efforts to support the West African nations affected by the outbreak. He said the hospital was an indication that France's involvement was not just monetary, adding that it would be in Guinea forests where the heart of the outbreak is. While the US announced on Tuesday that it is sending 3,000 troops to West Africa, and that it will build 17 new treatment centers. Britain, China, and Cuba have promised to send health workers to the region.
The killings of the eight members of the Ebola awareness team saddened global medical community. And for disease spreading prevention, a three-day lockdown is underway in Sierra Leone. The nation's six million populaces must stay at home while helpers search houses for hiding Ebola victims.
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