Sierra Leone plans four-day lockdown to halt Ebola spread

Sierra Leone plans to impose a four-day nationwide "lockdown" this month in a bid to contain the spread of the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola.

From 18th to 21th September people across the west African nation will not be allowed to leave their homes, a senior official in the president’s office said last night.

The move is intended to allow health workers to identify and isolate new cases to prevent the disease from spreading further, said Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential adviser on the country's Ebola task force.

“The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all,” he said.

So far, more than 3,000 people have been infected in west Africa, with almost 2,100 deaths from the virus recorded in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria since March, according to UN figures.

As of yesterday, Sierra Leone has recorded 491 deaths. Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that there could be another 20,000 cases before the Ebola outbreak is stopped.

The WHO announced yesterday that health workers could be given vaccines from November, when safety tests are completed.

More than 20 infected health workers have died in Sierra Leone since the start of the outbreak in March.

Kargbo said 21,000 people would be recruited to enforce the lockdown. Thousands of police officers and soldiers have already been deployed to enforce the quarantining of towns in Sierra Leone’s worst-hit regions, near the border with Guinea.

Organisations from across the world are rushing funds and equipment to west Africa, but Ebola is spreading faster than ever and experts say the lack of trained staff in weak health systems is a major obstacle to the response.

Earlier this week the director general of the WHO, Dr Margaret Chan, called for a massive global response to the outbreak and suggested it would take longer to control than has been assumed.

Speaking in Washington, she said it would take at least six to nine months to halt the virus and cost more than $600m (£365m).

Dr Chan said the west Africa outbreak was “the largest, most complex and most severe we’ve ever seen” and spreading at a pace that outstrips effort to control it.

The latest affected area is Port Harcourt in Nigeria, where it is likely that the virus will have been transmitted to many people from an infected doctor.

Sierra Leone - one of the countries worst hit by Ebola - is to confine people to their homes for four days in an effort to contain the deadly virus.

Reporting: Guardian/Reuters