Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Liberian police control residents in Ebola quarantined area as they wait for food rations. (CNS photo/Ahmed Jallanzo, EPA)

Hunger and panic are spreading among people unable to work because of restrictions aimed at containing the spread of Ebola, say church workers in West Africa. In Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, church groups “are trying to get food and distribute it to families...but movement is heavily restricted and there is little we can do,” said Salesian Father Jorge Crisafulli, provincial superior in West Africa, on Aug. 22, speaking from Accra, Ghana. Neighborhoods in Monrovia have been sealed off by a government-imposed state of emergency. Officials report that more than 2,600 people in West Africa have been infected with Ebola since March, and more than 1,400 people have died. Food prices in Liberia are “rising steeply and people are hungry,” Father Crisafulli said, noting that usually bustling markets “are now empty and no trading is happening.” He said, “Ebola has become an economic and social problem as well as a health problem,” noting that “panic and fear are now greater problems than the disease itself.”

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Scott Loudon and his team filming his documentary, ‘Anonimo’ (photo courtesy of Scott Loudon)
This week, a music festival returns to the Chiquitos missions in Bolivia, which the Jesuits established between 1691 and 1760. The story of the Jesuit "reductions" was made popular by the 1986 film ‘The Mission.’
The world can change for the better only when people are out in the world, “not lying on the couch,” Pope Francis told some 6,000 Italian schoolchildren.
Cindy Wooden April 19, 2024
Our theology of relics tells us something beautiful and profound not only about God but about what we believe about materiality itself.
Gregory HillisApril 19, 2024
"3 Body Problem" is an imaginative Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu's trilogy of sci-fi novels—and yet is mostly true to the books.
James T. KeaneApril 19, 2024