A family torn apart by Ebola

The heartbreaking moment grieving daughters watch as their mother’s body is carried away in Liberia

The devastated daughter of an Ebola victim cannot bear to watch as the body of her mother is pulled from her home in Monrovia, after the woman succumbed to the deadly virus.
A Red Cross burial team wearing protective suits and masks carries the body of 40-year-old Mary Nyanforh from the family’s house while the young girl holds her face in her hands.
The heartbreaking scenes in the Liberian capital show the tragic reality of living in a city ravaged by Ebola and the terrible impact on victims’ loved ones.
The worst-ever Ebola epidemic has already claimed more than 4,400 lives, with the vast majority of the victims living in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
More than half the dead have been in Libe­ria, where the healthcare system is still reel­ing from a devastating 1989-2003 civil war.

Healthcare unions in Liberia called off a strike today over pay and working conditions for medical staff tackling the epidemic.
The strike, which began on Monday, gar­nered poor support and most hospitals and clinics in the West African country had been operating normally.
‘We have called for the strike action to be called off on humanitarian grounds,’ said George Williams, secretary-general of the National Health Workers Association of Li­beria.
‘Our doors are open for negotiations at a later date…but as of now we call off the ac­tion based on numerous appeals from the Li­berian people both home and the diaspora.’
The deadly virus has also reached Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States but out­breaks have been contained so far.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday that the epidemic was continu­ing to spread in the three worst-hit nations and there could be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week by early December.
WHO assistant director-general Dr. Bruce Aylward said that the 70 per cent death rate of Ebola was ‘a high mortality disease’ in any circumstance. Previously, WHO had said the death rate was around 50 per cent.
He said the U.N. health agency was still focused on trying to treat Ebola patients, de­spite the huge demands on the broken health systems in West Africa.
‘It would be horrifically unethical to say that we’re just going to isolate people,’ he said, noting that new strategies like hand­ing out protect