WaPo: Ebola Guy's Real Victims: Relatives Who Won't be Able to Party for 3 Straight Saturday Nights
10/07/2014
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From the Washington Post, which seems to be on a hot streak:

As Ebola patient in Texas fights for his life, his family copes with stigma and isolation

By DeNeen L. Brown, Abby Phillip and Sean Sullivan October 5

DALLAS — As a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola was fighting to survive Sunday in a Texas hospital, his worried family members and others who were in contact with him said they are being ostracized by the local Liberian community, which is struggling to cope with fear, isolation and the stigma associated with the deadly disease. …

Six days after the first U.S. case was diagnosed, fear has raced across the Liberian community here. Public health officials are monitoring as many as 49 people who may have had contact with Duncan, whose flight landed in Dallas on Sept. 20. Four people, including Troh, who were close to him have been ordered to remain in isolation for the 21-day incubation period to help prevent the disease from spreading. CDC officials visit daily to monitor their temperatures for fever. None of them have developed symptoms, health officials said.

As they wait for any signs of illness, family members say their lives have been destroyed by rampant fear of the deadly disease.

“This whole Ebola thing — this virus is tearing people apart,” Jallah said. “Since the whole thing occurred, nobody has come to visit.”

On Saturday night, Jallah sat alone with her two children in the dim light of her garden apartment in Dallas, in self-imposed isolation. …

Although CDC officials have cleared her, saying it is unlikely she contracted Ebola when she visited her mother’s apartment last week to welcome the man she calls her stepfather, she said she has been shunned.

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