Sierra Leone Health Officials: Ebola Outbreak Caused By Female Herbalist
Health officials in Sierra Leone have blamed the outbreak of
the deadly Ebola Virus on a female herbalist who claimed to have power to heal
people of the disease.
The health officials said the disease should not have spread
from Guinea to Sierra Leone, but for the herbalist who lived in the eastern
border village of Sokoma.
“She was claiming to have powers to heal Ebola. Cases from
Guinea were crossing into Sierra Leone for treatment,” Mohamed Vandi, the top
medical official in the hard-hit district of Kenema, told Agence France-Presse.
“She got infected and died. During her funeral, women around
the other towns got infected.”
The herbalist’s mourners fanned out across the rolling hills of the Kissi tribal chiefdoms, starting a chain reaction of infections, deaths, funerals and more infections.
The herbalist’s mourners fanned out across the rolling hills of the Kissi tribal chiefdoms, starting a chain reaction of infections, deaths, funerals and more infections.
The deadly Ebola Virus has claimed the lives of more than
1,300 people in West Africa as well as a Spanish Priest who died last week in
Spain.
