As Ebola Rages, Poor Planning Thwarts Efforts

NEW YORK TIMES --by Jeffrey Gettleman                      Dec. 7, 2014

KERRY TOWN, Sierra Leone —On a freshly cleared hillside outside the capital, where the trees have been chopped down and replaced with acres of smooth gravel, the new Ebolatreatment center seems to have everything. There are racks of clean pink scrubs and white latex boots, bathrooms that smell like Ajax, solar-powered lights, a pharmacy tent, even a thatch-roofed hut to relax in.

 A lab technician from the Sierra Leone Health Ministry with a cooler of blood samples from suspected Ebola patients. Delays in testing are causing serious bottlenecks at treatment centers. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

But one piece is missing: staff. The facility opened recently with a skeleton crew. Now, in an especially hard-hit area where people are dying every day because they cannot get into an Ebola clinic, 60 of the 80 beds at the Kerry Town Ebola clinic are not being used.

It is like this with a lot here: good intentions, bad planning. Aid officials in Sierra Leone say poor coordination among aid groups, government mismanagement and some glaring inefficiencies are costing countless lives...

Ambulances, for example, are being used to ferry blood samples, sometimes just one test tube at a time, while many patients die at home after waiting days for an ambulance to come....

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/world/africa/as-ebola-rages-in-sierra-leone-poor-planning-thwarts-efforts.html?_r=0