Healer Responsible for Triggering Ebola Deaths In Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone's deadly Ebola crisis can be traced to one healer in a remote border village who claimed to have healing powers to cure the disease.

"She was claiming to have powers to heal Ebola. Cases from Guinea were crossing into Sierra Leone for treatment," said a top medical official, Mohamed Vandi, from the Kenema district, reports the Agence France Presse.

The healer caught the infection and died. Her funeral attracted a lot of mourners, who in turn got infected with the deadly disease.

Ebola reared up in Guinea in February and then spread through to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Till date it has killed 1350 people and more than 2000 have been infected.

The disease is highly contagious and spreads through contact and is characterized by fever, diarrhea vomiting and bleeding. The last stages turn the body almost into a corpse with fluids and contagens emerging on the body.

The disease has spread mostly due to touching of the corpses during funerals. Mourners, family and caretakers and health workers are at high risk.

In Kenema  40 nurses died of the disease in July. The number keeps on increasing with 12 more of the 22 infected succumbing.

 Sister Rebecca Lansana from a Sierra Leone hospital told the Guardian that she was concerned over high staff deaths. "My family do not want me to come here anymore. They think I will die, they don't want to be around me in case I give them Ebola," she said in an interview in early August.  She also fell victim to the disease soon, reports RT news.

Two American charity health workers contacted the disease in Liberia and had to be flown out to the United States and were administered experimental drugs. A Spanish priest succumbed to the disease. A prominent doctor in Sierra Leone also was a victim of the disease.

Government called security forces to contain the spread in Liberia. A slum of 50,000 people has been quarantined.