Photos: Inside a Liberian slum fighting the Ebola epidemic
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Version 0 of 1. In one of Liberia's largest slums, containing Ebola is an almost impossible task -- everything in this mile-long peninsula is shared -- from food, to mattresses to toilets. It is a city where thermometers, let alone proper treatment, is hard to come by. (Read the full story: The mission of tracking two little girls in a Liberian slum swarming with Ebola) Here is New Kru Town. Close quarters makes it very difficult to contain the spread of Ebola, prompting contact tracing teams to record and monitor those who may have been in contact with those who became infected. At a church in town, all the sermons were about the spread of Ebola. A pastor of Garden Street Temple Bible Wheel Church explained why isolating patients was difficult in a place like New Kru Town: “You can’t quarantine people here. We’re all intertwined.” Georgina, right, 12, and Princess Manjoe, 13, sit near her family home as they undergo 21 days of quarantine after their mother, Mary Nyanfort, 40, was suspected of dying of Ebola just two days before. Contact tracing and monitoring everyone an Ebola victim has contact with is near impossible in New Cru Town. Here, children play under laundry lines in the densely populated area.
READ MORE: View Photo Gallery —There may be only one way to halt the worst Ebola outbreak in history — find the disease’s victims, strictly quarantine them and monitor everyone they had interacted with. But doing quarantines and contact tracing and enforcing quarantines in a place like New Kru Town is a different story. |