Most hospitals and clinics in Liberia are closed so people are dying of preventable complications.

John Moore / Getty Images

MONROVIA, Liberia — Muhammed Sheriff's pregnant sister didn't have Ebola, but you could say Ebola killed her. Fatuma Fofana was 34 and had already given birth to five children, so she knew the pain that hit her belly two weeks ago wasn't normal. Everyone who heard her crying — "howling," her brother says — knew it wasn't normal too. So Sheriff took his older sister to a nearby clinic. They refused her. Pregnancy is a bloody, messy business, and the clinic staff was terrified that she might be infected with Ebola, a rare but deadly virus that has burned through the bush and lodged in the capital cities of three West African countries. Fofana didn't have Ebola, but that didn't matter at the clinic — or at the two other health facilities they went to. At the fourth, an attendant let them in, but there was nothing to be done. Fofana's baby was already dead in her womb, and the attendant had too little training and too few supplies to handle it. What the clinic did have was doctors' telephone numbers, so Sheriff called. And called. And called. He was ready to ply them with cash — it's costly to bring a doctor from his home for private clinic work, and for the task, Sheriff had collected nearly $400, a small fortune in Liberia. But no one wanted his money. In fact, not one of the three doctors he called even answered the phone. "The money they could charge, we could make available," Sheriff said, in a voice that still pleads for any other outcome, two full weeks after his sister's death. "But there was no one who would do the job. They couldn't come, even for money."

John Moore / Getty Images A woman and her daughter wait for one of few beds at an Ebola treatment center.

Fofana is not the only mother-to-be lost to the Ebola panic that has gripped Liberia. On Wednesday, a pregnant woman near the capital, Monrovia, died of labor complications because she couldn't find a clinic to treat her. Last week, a woman died of a miscarriage for the same reason. The story repeats as families tell of loved ones dying of malaria, diabetes, or diseases they know only by the symptoms doctors used to treat — a swollen foot, a shaking disorder. This is the world's biggest outbreak of Ebola — and the first ever in West Africa — and Liberia has been hard hit. The virus first appeared here in the rural north in April, raising alarm but seeming to taper off. Then it reignited in Monrovia, where Liberian and international public health officials have struggled to control its spread. The most recent figures from the World Health Organization report 786 cases and 413 deaths in Liberia alone, and more than 2,000 cases and 1,100 deaths in all affected countries. People are terrified. The virus is transmitted through bodily fluids, has no cure, and kills patients in a mere few weeks. But many Liberians deny the virus exists and resist health care workers. Some think Ebola is sorcery. Others think it's a government plot to enrich the president or health workers. Others simply can't reconcile what they see with what they're told: Bleeding from all over the body is the most famous symptom of Ebola. But in this outbreak, just as many people never bleed at all, though specialists don't understand why — and relatives decide it's something else. Denial, or explanations like sorcery such as these, are common in Ebola outbreaks; anthropologists have documented both in Congo, in 2003, and Uganda, in 2000, the last two places Ebola appeared. But Ebola is not common here. It's never been seen in West Africa, and that means that for most Liberians — already distrustful of their political elite, already weary from the civil war, a decade ago — the fear, the paranoia, is the most real part of Ebola. All these things are whirling together in Liberia. And that's when Ebola can kill you even when you don't have Ebola. Fear of disease couples with so much dire need. Over and over again, health workers say the same thing: "You don't know who is who." So it's safer not to help anyone at all. Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf foresaw precisely this problem. "The epidemic is having a chilling effect on the overall health care delivery," Sireaf said, when she declared a state of emergency nearly two weeks ago. "Out of fear of being infected with the disease, health care practitioners are afraid to accept new patients, especially in community clinics all across the country. Consequently, many common diseases which are especially prevalent during the rainy season, such as malaria, typhoid, and common cold, are going untreated and may lead to unnecessary and preventable deaths." She overlooked pregnancy. Liberia has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world. Giving birth here is always risky, even when you can count on a clinic being open.

John Moore / Getty Images