At least eight people who were in Guinea to educate the people and spread awareness about Ebola were killed and their bodies were found in a latrine in a school of a remote village.
Of those killed included health workers, local officials, a preacher, and journalists, and some were found to have had their throats slit, according to Reuters. The villagers had attacked them with machetes and clubs, and a large crowd threw stones at them.
According to BBC, six have been arrested, and the village “is now reportedly deserted.”
Reports say that this is a manifestation of the fear that has been surrounding the Ebola epidemic, leading to distrust of foreigners and officials.
“We don’t want [the doctors and aid workers] in there at all,” said Marcel Dambadounou, a Guinea village chief, to the New York Times in July. “We don’t accept their presence at all. They are the transporters of the virus in these communities.”
“We are absolutely afraid, that’s why we are avoiding contact with everybody—the whole world,” he added.
In the midst of the greatest Ebola outbreak in history, during which over 2,500 people have been killed and over 5,000 have contracted the virus, fears and confusion have been gripping the villagers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. This recent case is not the only incident in which villagers have attacked Ebola aid workers.
In April, only a month since the outbreak first occurred, an angry crowd in Macenta, located in the southern region of Guinea, attacked aid workers, throwing stones at them and accusing them of being the reason that the Ebola virus came into their area. In July, a PBS report mentioned that doctors who were “attempting to screen communities for the virus were chased away by villagers wielding knives, swords, and stones” in Lofa County, Liberia.
Fabio Friscia, a United Nations coordinator for the Ebola campaign, told the Global Post, “This is absolutely something we could expect. The population is being attacked by an absolutely new disease no one [in Western Africa] has ever seen before.”
Factors that cause the fear and distrust are various, including a lack of cultural sensitivity from the Western aid workers, and a lack of education on the villagers’ part.
“You can’t just walk in and say, ‘Hey, it’s a virus. We’ll take care of it,’” Ronald St. John, an expert who had worked with WHO, was quoted in TakePart. “We realized that part of the team had to include people like anthropologists and sociologists who were familiar with local practices and could explain things to people. You come roaring in with a team dressed in white suits and masks… you’ll have problems.”
“There are a set of beliefs and myths that impede our messages about treatment—it is a huge challenge,” Daniel Epstein, a spokesperson from the World Health Organization (WHO) told the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, President Obama announced a few days ago that the U.S. plans to send military troops to further aid the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and the International Monetary Fund announced that it plans to provide $127 million in loans to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, to help fight the disease.
