Ebola: Sierra Leone's survivors return to daily life – but as outcasts

When Abibatu and Lanphia finally returned home from the field treatment centre where they came close to losing their lives to Ebola, they hoped it was an end to the terrible price that the virus which had robbed them of their father and two brothers had exacted from their family.

Instead, what awaited them was a second battle for survival against the disease – this time the struggle against stigmatisation and rejection by a community which blamed them for bringing the disease into their midst in Sierra Leone and sought turn them into outcasts.

The lingering nature of the epidemic which has killed more than 11,000 people in three West African countries was underlined last week when the World Health Organisation announced it had recorded the first week since March 2014 with no new Ebola cases in the region.

see more at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-sierra-leones-survivors-return-to-daily-life-but-as-outcasts-a6689146.html