Members of a team trying to raise awareness about Ebola were killed in Guinea this week by villagers suspicious of attempts to fight the disease, officials say, as Ebola continues to spread in Africa.
The team went missing Tuesday after reaching the village of Womme in southern Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first documented. There, the team was met with people
throwing stones at them and hitting them with clubs, BBC News reported.
The delegation, which included doctors and journalists, reportedly tried to run into the bushes during the attack. Guinean government officials said Thursday that eight members of the delegation had been
killed in the attack and 21 others had been injured, The Los Angeles Times reported.
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"It's very sad and hard to believe, but they were killed in cold blood by the villagers," Guinea government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara told Agence France-Presse, according to the LA Times.
Since the Ebola outbreak was first reported in March, medical agencies have experienced somewhat of a backlash, a suspicion among residents. Doctors Without Borders told the Times that the resistence and hostility have become so great in at least 10 Ebola-stricken villages that they can no longer work to help villagers there.
The attack on the educators came at same time the World Health Organization announced 700 more new cases of Ebola have been diagnosed in West Africa.
The WHO said Thursday more than 5,300 people have contracted the virus over the past three weeks, with the overall death toll now surpassing 2,600 people.
Sierra Leone planned a three-day nationwide lockdown in an attempt the stop the spread of the Ebola there, a move some say could actually worsen the epidemic.
This week, President Barack Obama committed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a new training facility to help prepare more healthcare workers to handle sick patients and called on called on Congress to approve additional funding for these critical efforts to stop the virus.
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