Sierra Leone starts three-day shutdown to contain spread of Ebola disease
Residents are confined to their homes in a bid to contain the disease; UN Security Council labels the outbreak a threat to world peace
Sierra Leone yesterday launched a controversial three-day shutdown of the entire nation in a desperate bid to contain the spread of the Ebola virus, as the UN Security Council declared the outbreak a threat to world peace.
Most of Sierra Leone's population of six million were confined to their homes from midnight, with only essential workers such as health professionals and members of the security forces exempt from the lockdown.
Almost 30,000 volunteers will go door-to-door to educate locals and hand out soap, in an exercise that could lead to scores more patients and bodies being discovered in people's homes.
Health experts have criticised the shutdown, arguing that coercive measures to stem the epidemic could backfire and would be extremely hard to implement.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned that lockdowns may end up driving people underground "and jeopardise the trust between people and health providers".
But Sierra Leonean President Ernest Koroma said that if the population were to heed the volunteers' advice, "the campaign will greatly help to reverse the increasing trend of the disease transmission and become a very big boost to our collective effort to stop the outbreak".