Polyclinique Pasteur clinic in Mali (Baba Ahmed/AP)
The Great American Ebola furor of 2014 was more or less declared over with Dr.Craig Spencer's release from a New York hospital yesterday. This happy moment followed Monday's conclusion of the 21-day monitoring period for Kaci Hickox, the nurse and Maine resident who was once quarantined against her will, ending the idea that anyone currently in America is infectious. Remarkably, the Drudge Report was also found to be free of Ebola on Wednesday.
Overseas, however, the news on the largest outbreak on record isn't getting any better. In Sierra Leone, as the BBC reported, the only Ebola treatment clinic in the southern part of the country may be shut down as nurses and other hospital employees strike for the $100 weekly "hazard pay" they say they are owed by the government. Sierra Leone ranks as the second hardest-hit country where nearly a fifth of the deaths from the virus have taken place.
In Bamako, the capital of nearby Mali, which has been largely untouched by the outbreak despite sharing a long border with struggling Guinea, nearly 100 people were quarantined following two Ebola deaths. One victim was a nurse who had treated a patient with Ebola-like symptoms who also died of the virus, but was never tested. Reuters notes that the patient's "highly contagious body was washed in a Bamako mosque and returned to Guinea for burial without precautions against Ebola." Health officials fear that many people could be exposed as a result. This is the country's second outbreak, after the first was successfully contained.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization announced that the death toll in the Ebola outbreak had passed 5,000.
Source: Theatlantic.com
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