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Ebola response in rural Sierra Leone not yet rapid enough

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REUTERS   by    Emma Farge                                                                                                 Dec. 21, 2014       
KOIDU, Sierra Leone -- The rapid response team has arrived and the chaos is easing, but medics in a remote Sierra Leonean district are struggling to control a local Ebola outbreak when it's too late to nip it in the bud.

Health workers rest outside a quarantine zone at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner

A deployment of medical workers and equipment to Kono District has been the fastest so far in Sierra Leone, a country with nearly half the total Ebola cases,- under a strategy of tackling epidemic hotspots before they get too big.

But officials say responses need to be yet faster to fight the fever that has killed more than 7,000 people across West Africa.

In Koidu, the capital of Kono district, people continue to die of what is thought to be Ebola while others seem unaware of the risks. A Reuters reporter saw a young man lying on a city street, vomiting. He died there before an ambulance could come.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/21/us-health-ebola-leone-idUSKBN0JZ0KE20141221

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