The disease struck just as the three smaller countries were starting to bounce back from a past of violence and instability. Liberia is recovering from a civil war that spilled into its neighbor Sierra Leone during the 1990s, leaving both economies ruined. In 2010, Guinea, the world’s biggest bauxite exporter, held its first democratic elections since independence following decades of erratic military rule.
Moving West
Isolating the affected areas in Sierra Leone has made it almost impossible to get food to the capitals. The UN’s food aid agency says it will need to feed 5 percent of the population of the three countries in the coming months.
The past few months mark the first time the disease, identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, has killed anyone in west Africa. The virus lives naturally in fruit bats and other wild animals. Humans get it from the animal’s secretions and pass it on to other humans through contact with bodily fluids.
The outbreak is isolating the countries, even if the UN health agency says air travel is an unlikely major transmission point. Nigeria’s Arik Air suspended flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone after a Liberian man traveled by plane to Lagos and infected at least eight others with the disease after he collapsed at the airport.
British Airways Plc and Kenya Air Lines also halted routes to Liberia and Sierra Leone, while Gulf carrier Emirates scrapped flights to Guinea. Korean Air Lines on Aug. 14 canceled flights to Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, a regional hub located thousands of miles away from West Africa.
Rising Prices
“It’s not just that international flights are canceled and movement of people is restricted because of the quarantine measures,” said political analyst Lansana Gberie. “There’s also a disabling psychological atmosphere that isn’t conducive to productivity.”
Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia will need about six more months to turn the outbreak around, according to Doctors Without Borders. By then, the effects of the health emergency will have spread further, into oil prices — the three countries import all their oil — food costs and lost iron-ore production.
Residents of the hilly streets overlooking the Gulf of Guinea in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, spend their days at home, worrying about rising food and fuel prices, despite government promises to crack down on price-gouging opportunists. Checkpoints manned by military remind residents of a 1999 assault by rebels that left thousands dead.
Fatmata Edna Njai, a 35-year-old hotel receptionist, said she was dumbfounded when her employer handed her an envelope with the equivalent of a third of her monthly salary two weeks ago and told her to stay away until Ebola is contained. The hotel wasn’t getting any customers, and Fatmata was told she hasn’t lost her job.
She now stays with her son, parents and three relatives inside their apartment most of the day, and says she’s run out of money. “I’m praying and fasting so that God will provide me a job,” she said. (Bloomberg News)[eap_ad_3]