Battling Ebola: How Tours into Guinea’s Hot Zone are Helping in the Fight

In Guinea, misinformation about Ebola abounds. Here, the disease has killed more than 2,300 people, and the streets are rife with rumors – of how Ebola is a hoax or a conspiracy to harvest organs. Some Guineans who have seen the ravages of Ebola firsthand believe that the very people coming to help them are actually spreading the disease.

After deploying two times to this West African country as a member of USAID’s Ebola Disaster Response Assistance Team, it became clear to me that community resistance is one of the biggest obstacles to stopping Ebola.

But one NGO is taking a novel approach to dispel these rumors. In the town of Forécariah – a two hour’s drive southeast of Guinea’s capital Conakry – the French Red Cross is running an Ebola treatment center in this hard-hit prefecture with the support of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. While a team of health care workers is fighting for the lives of the sick, another group is fighting fears by inviting the community inside.

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(Source: blogs.state.gov)