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Ebola outbreak prompts food scarcity and threat of social conflict

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FURTHER DETAILS ON THE IMPACT OF EBOLA ON LIBERIA

THE GUARDIAN                                        Oct. 23, 2014

By Clar Ni Chonghaile

 

A market in Kolahun, Liberia, where Mercy Corps says the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak is causing great hardship. Photograph: Mercy Corps

Farmers in Liberia are too frightened to work together in their fields, fertilisers and seeds are stuck on the other side of closed borders, markets are almost empty, people have less money because jobs that involve physical contact with others are disappearing, and prices for everything from cassava to palm oil are rising.

It’s a devastating chain reaction sparked by an unprecedented outbreak of disease in one of the world’s poorest countries. Beyond the high mortality rate and human suffering, aid agencies fear the fabric of a society that endured a brutal civil conflict may be ruined.

Ten months after the Ebola outbreak started in Guinea, evidence is mounting that the crisis may be reversing more than a decade of fitful progress in west Africa.

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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/23/ebola-outbreak-food-scarcity-social-conflict

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October 23 2014 3:32 PM

A Liberian town was in crisis Thursday as 43 people quarantined on suspicion of having contracted the Ebola virus threatened to escape from the isolation area due to a lack of food. The town, Jenewonda, located near Liberia's border with Sierra Leone, recently saw four people die of the virus, which led authorities to institute the quarantine, the Associated Press quoted state radio station Liberia Broadcasting System as reporting.

 
 

As has been the case with a number of other Ebola quarantine zones during the outbreak, food scarcity quickly became a major concern as no one has been allowed to enter or leave the area for a period of time that could not be immediately quantified. The Liberian Broadcasting System report said the quarantined Liberians said the United Nations World Food Programme had stopped delivering food to them, but organization spokesman Alexis Masciarelli told the AP via email that it had not handed out food in the affected area.

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