The fear and chaos wrought by West Africa's Ebola outbreak is powerfully illustrated in a Reuters video released on Tuesday of an infected patient on the run through Liberia's capital city.
The man fled a quarantine center in Monrovia in search of food, sending ripples of panic through the crowded market, Reuters reports. He tried to fight off health workers chasing him before he was ultimately wrestled into a vehicle.
"We told the Liberian government from the beginning, we do not want an Ebola camp here," a witness says in the video. "Today marks the fifth Ebola patient coming outside vomiting and toileting."
Liberia and other West African countries are struggling to enforce quarantine zones to halt the spread of the deadly virus amid a pervasive fear and mistrust of authorities. Many patients have fled their isolation wards in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in one sealed-off neighborhood in Liberia, security forces recently fired on residents who were protesting the quarantine.
More than 1,500 people have died from the Ebola outbreak, according to the World Health Organization. The United Nations warned on Tuesday that food prices are rising and that border closures are preventing people from getting supplies they need.
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