Ebola Death Toll Tops 5,000; Mali Quarantines 90

Ebola Death Toll Tops 5,000; Mali Quarantines 90

(Reuters) – The death of a nurse in Mali from Ebola prompted on Wednesday the quarantine of more than 90 people in the West African country’s capital, as the World Health Organization said the disease had now claimed at least 5,160 lives.

The worst outbreak of the virus on record has ravaged the impoverished West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and led to a global watch for cases outside the region.

Mali must now trace other people who had contact with the 25-year-old nurse and three others infected, just as an initial group of people linked to its first case completed their 21-day quarantine on Tuesday. Ebola’s maximum incubation period is 21 days.

The more than 90 quarantined in Bamako included about 20United Nations peacekeepers being treated at the capital’s Pasteur Clinic, where the nurse worked, officials said. Police locked down the clinic on Tuesday night.

In Sierra Leone, more than 400 health workers at one of its few Ebola treatment centres went on strike over unpaid risk allowances, officials said. Some returned later in the day.

Echoing that walkout were protests and strikes by nurses across the United States over what they characterized as insufficient protection for health workers dealing with potential Ebola patients. Two nurses, who treated a Liberian man who died of the disease at a Dallas hospital in October, contracted the virus but recovered.

Read the full story at Reuters.

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