KOLO BENGOU, Guinea --
Eight youths, some armed with slingshots and machetes, stood warily
alongside a rutted dirt road at an opening in the high reeds, the path
to the village of Kolo Bengou.
The deadly Ebola virus is believed to have infected several people in
the village, and the youths were blocking the path to prevent health
workers from entering.
"We don't want any visitors," said their leader, Faya Iroundouno, 17,
president of Kolo Bengou's youth league. "We don't want any contact
with anyone." The others nodded in agreement and fiddled with their
slingshots.
Singling out the international aid group Doctors Without Borders, Mr.
Iroundouno continued, "Wherever those people have passed, the
communities have been hit by illness."
Health workers here say they are now battling two enemies: the
unprecedented Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 660 peoplein
four countries since it was first detected in March, and fear, which
has produced growing hostility toward outside help. On Friday alone,
health authorities in Guinea confirmed 14 new cases of the disease.
Workers and officials, blamed by panicked populations for spreading
the virus, have been threatened with knives, stones and machetes,
their vehicles sometimes surrounded by hostile mobs.
Log barriers across narrow dirt roads block medical teams from
reaching villages where the virus is suspected. Sick and dead
villagers, cut off from help, are infecting others.
"This is very unusual, that we are not trusted," said Marc Poncin, the
emergency coordinator in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders, the main
group fighting the disease here. "We're not stopping the epidemic."
Efforts to monitor it are grinding to a halt because of "intimidation," he said.
People appear to have more confidence in witch doctors.
Health officials say the epidemic is out of control, moving back and
forth across the porous borders of Guinea and neighboring Sierra Leone
and Liberia -- often on the backs of the cheap motorcycles that ply the
roads of this region of green hills and dense forest -- infiltrating
the lively open-air markets, overwhelming weak health facilities and
decimating villages. It was in this rural area, 400 miles over bad
roads from Guinea's capital, Conakry, where the outbreak was first
spotted, and where it has hit hardest. More than 80 percent of those
infected have died in this region, and Guinea has recorded more than
twice as many deaths as the other countries.
In Koundony, more than one-eighth of the population, including the
headman, are dead; many others have fled.
There is no known cure for the virus, which causes raging fever,
vomiting, diarrhea and uncontrolled bleeding in about half the cases
and up to 90 percent of the time, rapid death. Merely touching an
infected person, or the body of a victim, is dangerous; coming into
contact with blood, vomit or feces can be deadly.
Now the fear of aid workers, principally from Doctors Without Borders
and the Red Cross, is helping to spread the disease, health officials
say, creating a secondary crisis. Villagers flee at the sight of a Red
Cross truck. When a Westerner passes, villagers cry out, "Ebola,
Ebola!" and run away.
This month, Doctors Without Borders classified 12 villages in Guinea
as "red," meaning they might harbor Ebola but were inaccessible for
safety reasons.
As recently as April, the epidemic seemed to be under control. But in
the past two weeks, its center appeared to have shifted across the
border to Sierra Leone, where most of the new dead were being
recorded. The sick are being hidden and the dead buried, without any
protection.
Last week, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported that its lead
doctor fighting Ebola had contracted the disease, and the virus had
spread to a fourth country, with a confirmed fatality in Nigeria. Over
the weekend, an aid organization working in Liberia, Samaritan's
Purse, said that two Americans, a doctor who was treating Ebola
patients and an aid worker on a case management team, had tested
positive for the virus. And the Liberian government said Sunday that
one of its most high-profile doctors had died of Ebola, according to
The Associated Press.
Back in Guinea, in the village of Wabengou, residents placed a tree in
the road to block outsiders. They also attacked an official delegation
from Conakry, rushing its cars, banging on the vehicles and
brandishing machetes, according to Doctors Without Borders.
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