Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
Fresh Graves Point to Undercount of Ebola Toll
By ADAM NOSSITERSEPT. 22, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone ? The gravedigger hacked at the cemetery?s dense undergrowth, clearing space for the day?s Ebola victims. A burial team, in protective suits torn with gaping holes, arrived with fresh bodies.
...
Since the beginning of the outbreak more than six months ago, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported only 10 confirmed Ebola deaths here in Freetown, the capital of more than one million people, and its suburbs as of Sunday ? a hopeful sign that this city, unlike the capital of neighboring Liberia, had been relatively spared the ravages of the outbreak.
But the bodies pouring in to the graveyard tell a different story. In the last eight days alone, 110 Ebola victims have been buried at King Tom Cemetery, according to the supervisor, Abdul Rahman Parker, suggesting an outbreak that is much more deadly than either the government or international health officials have announced.
?I?m working with the burial team, and the first question I ask them is, ?Are they Ebola-positive?? ? said Mr. Parker, adding that the figures were based on medical certificates that he had seen himself. The deaths are carefully recorded by name and date in a notebook headed ?Ebola Burials.?
A burial team supervisor who drove up with fresh bodies echoed Mr. Parker?s assertion. ?Any body we collect is a positive case,? said Sorie Kessebeh. ?All the bodies that we are bringing in are positive.?
...
But the exhaustion of the Ebola gravediggers at King Tom Cemetery, who dig as many as 16 graves a day, indicated that the disease was far from being contained.
...
The Ebola victims were buried in an expanding stretch of fresh muddy graves under a giant cotton tree, and the makeshift arrangements are seen as a looming threat by the residents of the slum next to it. No barrier stops the pigs rooting in the adjoining trash field from digging in the fresh Ebola graves, which residents say they often do.
...
?Since last month, it?s every day, any minute and hour, and often, they are coming? to bury the Ebola dead, said Desmond Kamara, a police officer.
...
?We are at risk, big risk,? said Ousman Kamara, a resident. ?We have made many complaints.?
But the bodies, he said, keep coming.
?Even at night,? he said. ?You stand here, and you see them coming.?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/w...n-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
By ADAM NOSSITERSEPT. 22, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone ? The gravedigger hacked at the cemetery?s dense undergrowth, clearing space for the day?s Ebola victims. A burial team, in protective suits torn with gaping holes, arrived with fresh bodies.
...
Since the beginning of the outbreak more than six months ago, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported only 10 confirmed Ebola deaths here in Freetown, the capital of more than one million people, and its suburbs as of Sunday ? a hopeful sign that this city, unlike the capital of neighboring Liberia, had been relatively spared the ravages of the outbreak.
But the bodies pouring in to the graveyard tell a different story. In the last eight days alone, 110 Ebola victims have been buried at King Tom Cemetery, according to the supervisor, Abdul Rahman Parker, suggesting an outbreak that is much more deadly than either the government or international health officials have announced.
?I?m working with the burial team, and the first question I ask them is, ?Are they Ebola-positive?? ? said Mr. Parker, adding that the figures were based on medical certificates that he had seen himself. The deaths are carefully recorded by name and date in a notebook headed ?Ebola Burials.?
A burial team supervisor who drove up with fresh bodies echoed Mr. Parker?s assertion. ?Any body we collect is a positive case,? said Sorie Kessebeh. ?All the bodies that we are bringing in are positive.?
...
But the exhaustion of the Ebola gravediggers at King Tom Cemetery, who dig as many as 16 graves a day, indicated that the disease was far from being contained.
...
The Ebola victims were buried in an expanding stretch of fresh muddy graves under a giant cotton tree, and the makeshift arrangements are seen as a looming threat by the residents of the slum next to it. No barrier stops the pigs rooting in the adjoining trash field from digging in the fresh Ebola graves, which residents say they often do.
...
?Since last month, it?s every day, any minute and hour, and often, they are coming? to bury the Ebola dead, said Desmond Kamara, a police officer.
...
?We are at risk, big risk,? said Ousman Kamara, a resident. ?We have made many complaints.?
But the bodies, he said, keep coming.
?Even at night,? he said. ?You stand here, and you see them coming.?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/w...n-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0