Ebola: Liberia’s Health Minister quarantined

Ebola has continued to tear the fabrics of Liberia’s nationhood into shreds with the reported fear that the country’s deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bernice Dahn, might have been infected with the virus.

Liberia's Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Bernice Dahn

Health officials disclosed on Sunday, that the minister who is also the country's Chief Medical Officer, has placed herself as well as her assistant staff, in quarantine and would remain under observation for 21 days for the full incubation period of the virus.

The minister’s isolation followed the death of her assistant who died of the disease on Thursday.

The virus, which has affected four West African countries with 3, 458 people infected, continues to ravage Liberia the most. A W.H.O sources discloses that about 50 bodies are incinerated each day in the country’s capital, Monrovia, although some of them may not actually have Ebola. The numbers are not even accurate because sources say some people continue to bury their dead secretly.

 According to a W.H.O official, Liberia’s dilapidated public health infrastructure, ruined by 14 years of civil war to 2003 and endemic poverty, has “totally collapsed” under the Ebola crisis.