The outbreak of the virus, which began a year ago in neighbouring Guinea and quickly spread to Liberia, is now dominating the lives of everyone in Sierra Leone.
The western part of the
country, including the capital Freetown where around a third of the population
of more than six million lives, is bearing the brunt of the current upturn in
cases.
Authorities have instigated
what they call the "Western Surge" to redouble efforts to try to keep
the virus at bay.
Eunice Peacock, of the
District Ebola Response Centre (DERC), admits they are "running to catch
up" with the rate of the spread of the disease and would not be drawn on
when it would be brought under control.
One of the biggest problems
is a refusal by what some claim is up to 80% of the population, a figure
disputed by the government, to even acknowledge Ebola is real.
One of the scores of
operators at the UK-funded 117 Ebola telephone reporting line said many of the
calls she takes are pranks or abusive.
"They will use abusive
language on you, they'll say Ebola is lie, lie, you're just taking money, most
of them that is what they say," she said.
"They don't believe.
Most of the people they don't believe in the Ebola stuff."
The genuine calls get
pushed on to the DERC where they are followed up either as live cases or
burials.
One of the burial units is
run by the Red Cross and again funded by the UK.
It aims to get everybody
reported to it collected and buried in the central Ebola cemetery within 24
hours.
Even those who have not
died from the virus are collected and treated as if they had the disease, which
means getting accurate figures for the number of Ebola deaths is difficult.
We went out with Burial
Team 7 into the Wellington area of Freetown - up steep, winding tracks where
even four-wheel-drive vehicles struggled to pass.
There, we went to the home
of Alie Kamara, a 63-year-old father of 16, who had died on the morning we
arrived. He had been ill for some time.
His family said they had a
certificate saying he was free of Ebola - but the body retrieval team still put
on their protective suits to salvage Alie's remains before disinfecting the
house.
His body was put into two
sealed bags after a short Muslim blessing before being lifted on to the back of
a truck to be taken to the graveyard.
The team moved on to the
next body. Here, Marie - the daughter of 70-year old Allieu Koroma - was
hysterically throwing herself to the ground.
Again there was no
suggestion of Ebola, though there were raised eyebrows when the dead man's wife
suggested he too had a medical certificate proving he was free of Ebola, but
that "rats had eaten it".
As with Alie, Allieu's body
was swabbed, double bagged and put on to the back of the truck.
The bodies of two confirmed
Ebola victims were then picked up from a hospital before the team travelled on
to a graveyard.
The World War II cemetery
has been disused for years, but is now Freetown's central Ebola burial site.
There is row after row of
freshly filled graves, side by side with row after row of empty ones awaiting a
body.
No sooner had Burial Team 7
placed Alie and Allieu into their respective final resting places, another
group from a different aid organisation turned up to do the same for their
Ebola dead.
Skynews
Skynews
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