Nearly Halted in Sierra Leone, Ebola Makes Comeback by Sea

Marie Kamara, left, sitting behind a quarantine line in the village of Rosanda last week under the watch of a community leader. The girl died  several days after this photo was taken.”

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — It seemed as if the Ebola crisis was abating.

New cases were plummeting. The president lifted travel restrictions, and schools were to reopen. A local politician announced on the radio that two 21-day incubation cycles had passed with no new infections in his Freetown neighborhood. The country, many health officials said, was “on the road to zero.”

Then Ebola washed in from the sea.

Sick fishermen came ashore in early February to the packed wharf-side slums that surround the country’s fanciest hotels, which were filled with public health workers. Volunteers fanned out to contain the outbreak, but the virus jumped quarantine lines and cascaded into the countryside, bringing dozens of new infections and deaths.

“We worked so hard,” said Emmanuel Conteh, an Ebola response coordinator in a rural district. “It is a shame to all of us.”

“His wife caused all this,” Ms. Kalokoh said. Now a patient at an International Medical Corps treatment center, she gestured to a treatment tent where her daughter-in-law lay. A survivor working at the center shushed Ms. Kalokoh, saying that it was in God’s hands and that she should not blame anyone.

Every day last week, ambulances bumped over dusty roads, going to Rosanda to carry villagers 45 minutes to the medical center. Two mothers walked weakly to the open doors of an ambulance as their young sons watched, shoulders heaving with sobs. A young girl was taken last Sunday as her mother stood helpless behind candy-striped quarantine tape. The girl, Marie Kamara, died on Friday.

As cases mounted, Dr. Conteh, the district’s Ebola response coordinator, summoned about 125 traditional healers, tribal chiefs and other local leaders. He called for a suspension of traditional practices and warned that criminal summonses were being issued to anyone accused of hiding the sick. Experts fear that such threats will lead more people to go underground.

“The war is still on,” Dr. Conteh told colleagues the next day. “We’re at a critical stage. We can either make or break.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 1, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Nearly Halted in Sierra Leone, Ebola Makes Comeback by Sea. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

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