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Ebola Ground Zero: Sierra Leone's apocalyptic overflowing cemetery
Dispatch: Not since the brutal civil war of the 1990s has Sierra Leone witnessed such apocalyptic scenes as the King Tom cemetery struggles to bury the country's Ebola victims ? including an increasing number of children
Colin Freeman By Colin Freeman, Freetown11:38AM GMT 17 Jan 2015
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Since the outbreak spiralled out of control last summer, an average of 50 bodies have been laid to rest here every day by boiler-suited health workers. Such is the pace of new arrivals that the plots are marked only by tiny plywood sticks, each with a name scrawled in red marker pen.
Already they occupy a space the size of a football pitch, and in one corner, bulldozers are clearing sections of the city tip to make room for more.
Toiled over by a team of exhausted, sweating gravediggers that has expanded from four to nearly 100, the graveyard's rich red soil has become the ultimate "Ground Zero" in Sierra Leone's battle against Ebola. As part of efforts to stop the spread of the virus, King Tom is where every single person who has died in Freetown now ends up, whether they were killed by the virus or not.
Exactly how many of the 4,400 corpses laid to rest here since August are victims of Ebola is impossible to say, as the city's overwhelmed authorities lack the time to analyse every death. But the ministry of health "burial squads" that now act as roving undertakers in Freetown take no chances. Each body arrives in a hermetically sealed white plastic bag, which the squads then stagger with across the cemetery's uneven ground, laying them in one of dozens of newly dug pits.
The most unsettling sight of all, however, is the bags that require hardly any effort to carry at all. When The Telegraph visited the cemetery last week, a procession of three burial workers picked their way through the graves, each with a tiny, knapsack-sized bag cradled in their arms. Edward Conteh, aged 3, Amna Kabbah Dumbaya, aged four months, and Mamayo Sesay, aged two weeks, were buried in a section specially set aside for children. It is also by far the fastest-growing section.
In the first five days of January alone, 156 children under five were buried there, according to Fiona McLysaght, country director for the charity Concern Worldwide, which is supervising the burial operation.
"The number of children we are burying every week is absolutely staggering," said Ms McLysaght, whose charity's work is being funded by Britain's ?225 million Ebola aid package to Sierra Leone. "It is an appalling situation, although we believe they are mainly non-Ebola cases that are related to the secondary health-care crisis."
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Dispatch: Not since the brutal civil war of the 1990s has Sierra Leone witnessed such apocalyptic scenes as the King Tom cemetery struggles to bury the country's Ebola victims ? including an increasing number of children
Colin Freeman By Colin Freeman, Freetown11:38AM GMT 17 Jan 2015
...
Since the outbreak spiralled out of control last summer, an average of 50 bodies have been laid to rest here every day by boiler-suited health workers. Such is the pace of new arrivals that the plots are marked only by tiny plywood sticks, each with a name scrawled in red marker pen.
Already they occupy a space the size of a football pitch, and in one corner, bulldozers are clearing sections of the city tip to make room for more.
Toiled over by a team of exhausted, sweating gravediggers that has expanded from four to nearly 100, the graveyard's rich red soil has become the ultimate "Ground Zero" in Sierra Leone's battle against Ebola. As part of efforts to stop the spread of the virus, King Tom is where every single person who has died in Freetown now ends up, whether they were killed by the virus or not.
Exactly how many of the 4,400 corpses laid to rest here since August are victims of Ebola is impossible to say, as the city's overwhelmed authorities lack the time to analyse every death. But the ministry of health "burial squads" that now act as roving undertakers in Freetown take no chances. Each body arrives in a hermetically sealed white plastic bag, which the squads then stagger with across the cemetery's uneven ground, laying them in one of dozens of newly dug pits.
The most unsettling sight of all, however, is the bags that require hardly any effort to carry at all. When The Telegraph visited the cemetery last week, a procession of three burial workers picked their way through the graves, each with a tiny, knapsack-sized bag cradled in their arms. Edward Conteh, aged 3, Amna Kabbah Dumbaya, aged four months, and Mamayo Sesay, aged two weeks, were buried in a section specially set aside for children. It is also by far the fastest-growing section.
In the first five days of January alone, 156 children under five were buried there, according to Fiona McLysaght, country director for the charity Concern Worldwide, which is supervising the burial operation.
"The number of children we are burying every week is absolutely staggering," said Ms McLysaght, whose charity's work is being funded by Britain's ?225 million Ebola aid package to Sierra Leone. "It is an appalling situation, although we believe they are mainly non-Ebola cases that are related to the secondary health-care crisis."
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