Culture

submitted by George Hurlburt

The Kabia family grieves as the body of their day-old daughter is removed from their home in the Hill Cut neighborhood of Freetown, Sierra Leone, by a member of a safe burial team. The government mandates that all deaths in Ebola-infested districts be treated as potential Ebola cases and buried in accordance with safety procedures.
Photograph by Pete Muller, Prime for National Geographic

To stop infected bodies from spreading the disease in Sierra Leone, health officials persuaded local leaders to change how villagers mourned.

nationalgeographic.com - by Amy Maxmen - January 30, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone—A great quarrel followed the death of a pregnant Guinean woman in June. Mourners refused to allow a team of outsiders dressed in what looked like white space suits to bury her Ebola-infected corpse. If she was to be saved from eternal wandering and reach the village of the dead, they insisted, her fetus must be removed.

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...Whether the world's worst-ever Ebola outbreak can be wiped out in West Africa in 2015 is uncertain. To a large extent, it depends as much on locals changing their practices and beliefs as it does on continued international assistance.

 One of the biggest problems is finding all contacts of confirmed cases. Teams are in place in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three worst-hit countries, to monitor suspect cases, but too little is known about where the virus is spreading. Typically, every confirmed Ebola case has about 12 to 20 possible contacts who must be monitored. In Sierra Leone, the epicenter of the current crisis, officials are reporting just eight, leading to suspicions that contact tracing is inadequate....

 Among concrete progress since the crisis gained international attention last summer, a major initiative led by the U.N. has been put into place, including:

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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ending-ebola-15-depends-locals-foreign-aid-28121449?singlePage=true

November 21, 2014 - A family behind a bright orange quarantine rope learns of the death of a family member.
Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post

WASHINGTON POST--by Kevin Sieff                                                                 Dec. 4, 2014
KOINADUGU, Sierra Leone --
...Six months after the world’s largest Ebola outbreak began, experts say one of their biggest challenges is persuading people to trust the medical system. Families still hide suspected Ebola victimsor refuse to take them to health facilities. The problem exists in Liberia, but some foreign health officials say it’s even more daunting in Sierra Leone, where the transmission rate continues to climb even as it declines in the neighboring country.

In rural areas like Koinadugu, a district bordering Guinea, the problem is especially severe. There is no electricity or running water, let alone a modern hospital. Medicine usually means local herbs, generic malaria pills or the advice of a local healer. People whisper that disinfectant spreads the disease rather than kills it.