Wednesday as authorities struggled to contain the deadly disease,
while new suspected cases in Asia sparked fears of it spreading from
Africa.
Four residents were injured in Monrovia's West Point slum when
soldiers opened fire on crowds and used tear gas as they tried to
evacuate a state official and her family from the quarantined quarter.
The crackdown in Liberia comes as authorities around the world are
scrambling to stem the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola, which has killed
more than 1,200 people across west Africa this year.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf quarantined West Point and
Dolo Town, to the east of the capital, and imposed a night-time curfew
as part of new drastic measures to fight the disease.
Residents of West Point, where club-weilding youths stormed an Ebola
medical facility on Saturday, reacted with fury to the crackdown,
hurling stones and shouting at the security forces.
"It is inhumane," resident Patrick Wesseh told AFP by telephone.
"They can't suddenly lock us up without any warning, how are our
children going to eat?"
Liberia, with 466 deaths from 834 diagnosed cases, has seen the
biggest toll among the four west African countries that have been hit
by Ebola.
The death toll from the epidemic that has swept through West Africa
since March now stands at 1,229 after a surge of 84 deaths in just
three days, according to the World Health Organization.
On Wednesday, authorities in Asia said they had detained several
people arriving from west Africa who they suspect could have Ebola.
Two Nigerians who travelled to Vietnam from Nigeria were undergoing
tests at a specialist hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, health officials
said Wednesday.
And in Myanmar, a local man was also being tested after arriving from Guinea.
The cases follow the news on Tuesday that patients were also being
tested in the United States and Spain.
- Health services 'overwhelmed' -
From its initial outbreak in Guinea -- where 394 people have died so
far -- the virus spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria,
overwhelming inadequate public health services already battling common
deadly diseases such as malaria.
Straining the situation even further, several top officials leading
the fight have lost their lives to the disease.
A doctor who treated Nigeria's first Ebola patient was named among the
dead on Tuesday, taking the death toll in Africa's most populous
country to five.
Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said Liberian-American Patrick
Sawyer, 40, was "the most senior who participated in the management of
the (first Ebola) patient" in the country.
The UN's new pointman on Ebola, David Nabarro, was expected to arrive
in west Africa on Wednesday evening, and is hoping to shore up health
services in the four affected countries.
The British physician said he would focus on "revitalising the health
sectors" in the affected countries, many of which have only recently
emerged from years of devastating conflict.
Efforts to contain the epidemic have also run up against local
distrust of outside doctors, and stories of aid workers carrying the
infection.
Liberia's leader warned that local rituals were among the factors
spreading the disease.
"We have been unable to control the spread due to continued denials,
cultural burying practices, disregard for the advice of health workers
and disrespect for the warnings by the government," Sirleaf said.
- 'Encouraging signs' -
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib noted "encouraging signs" in Nigeria and
Guinea, where prevention measures and work to trace lines of infection
were starting to take effect.
The Nigerian outbreak has been traced to a sole foreigner, a
Liberian-American who died in late July in Lagos. All subsequent
Nigerian victims have had direct contact with him.
In Sierra Leone, where 365 people have died from the virus, the
outbreak has also been traced back to one person: a herbalist in the
remote eastern border village of Sokoma.
"She was claiming to have powers to heal Ebola. Cases from Guinea were
crossing into Sierra Leone for treatment," Mohamed Vandi, the top
medical official in the hard-hit district of Kenema, told AFP.
No cure or vaccine is currently available for Ebola, which is spread
by close contact with body fluids, meaning patients must be isolated.
Given the extent of the crisis, the WHO has authorised largely
untested treatments -- including ZMapp and the Canadian-made VSV-EBOV
vaccine, whose possible side effects on humans are not known.
Three doctors in Liberia who had been given the experimental US-made
ZMapp are reportedly responding to the treatment.
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