Efforts to beat Ebola in Sierra Leone have been dealt a setback after 31 new cases were recorded in one village.

The community of 500 just outside the town of Makeni has now been put in lockdown by the army amid fears that more could be infected.

The World Health Organisation said cases had been linked to one man who escaped quarantine in Freetown to go to his village for treatment from a traditional faith healer.

The quarantine area is a fishing community, yards from the hotel where many workers from humanitarian agencies have stayed.

“On Sunday we had just five patients, it was really quiet,” said Bill Boyes, spokesman for the International Medical Corps (IMC) in Makeni.

“Then all of a sudden the ambulances started arriving and we had 16 people and it hasn’t stopped since. I think we have about 50 patients with 31 confirmed Ebola cases,” he said.

It is the busiest the 100-bed centre has been since it opened in December, with confirmed cases spilling out into an empty convalescent ward.

Most of the patients are part of the fisherman’s extended family.

The flare-up comes less than a week after the country recorded just two new cases of Ebola, the lowest since the virus first hit the country in May last year.

Boyes said he believed the rapid response would contain the disease to the village. “We had kind of being expecting it. It had been tailing off, but all it takes is one person.

“I was out in the village yesterday and the surveillance is really good, but this was just one person not heeding the advice. He knew he was sick and in danger and maybe he was just scared and wanted to go home.”

“I was in the village yesterday and you can smell the fear in the air.”

But the fragility of the decline is shown by official figures see-sawing from two cases nationally last Wednesday to as many as 16 last Friday.

In the past six days 69 cases have been recorded, bringing the death toll to more than 3,100.

The IMC said the man who escaped quarantine died about 24 hours after returning home and his family had brought in a faith healer to treat him with traditional methods, which included touching and washing him.

“Within a week the man’s mother, father, uncle, brother and the faith healer who performed the traditional ceremony on him were all in the ETC [Ebola treatment centre],” it said.



The faith healer and the man’s father had both died within the past 48 hours, the IMC said.

The spike in cases came as the fourth district out of 14 in the country was declared Ebola-free after 42 days with no new cases recorded.