Red Cross denounces attacks on Ebola teams in Guinea

CONAKRY, Guinea – The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement on Wednesday denounced a series of violent attacks on its volunteers battling the deadly Ebola epidemic in Guinea.

The world’s largest humanitarian network said the latest case involved two burial workers who were beaten up on Sunday by a mob in the western town of Forecariah.

It “noted with regret the violence against teams of Red Cross volunteers involved in the fight against the Ebola epidemic.”

The organisation in its statement launched an “urgent appeal” to Guineans to “refrain from attacking the volunteers of the Red Cross, and allow them to do their job and save lives safely”.

Guinea and its neighbours Sierra Leone and Liberia have registered more than 9,000 deaths since the Ebola epidemic flared up in December 2013.

Mobs have sporadically attacked health workers in all three countries after being taken in by a variety of conspiracy theories, often characterising the outbreak as a plot by the West to murder Africans and harvest their organs.

Guinea has seen the worst of the bloodshed and the situation is particularly tense in the densely-forested southern region, where the epidemic began.

The country has put 58 people on trial over an attack on Ebola outreach workers by a mob wielding machetes, according to judicial sources.

The defendants are accused of wounding several government workers and staff from the global medical aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) with the knives as well as assaulting them with sticks and stones.

The group, who have been in the dock since Monday last week in Forecariah, were arrested after the attack in early January on the nearby island of Kaback.

Last September eight members of an outreach team in the southeastern town of Womey were killed by protesters who denied the existence of Ebola and denounced a “white conspiracy.” – Rappler.com