AlQa'dah 24, 1435, Sep 19, 2014, SPA -- Streets across Sierra Leone were empty on Friday as the country began a three-day, government-imposed curfew to gain control of an Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 2,600 people in West Africa. Security personnel were deployed to all major roads to ensure Sierra Leone's roughly 6 million residents were complying with the lockdown, which confines people to their homes from September 19 to 21. "We need to restrict movement for us all to avoid body contact," government spokesman Abdulai Baratay told dpa. The only people allowed on the streets are 28,000 volunteers carrying out a door-to-door campaign to trace Ebola cases and educate people about the deadly virus. They will also hand out 1.5 million bars of soap to encourage hand washing, which is crucial in the containment of the disease. The volunteers have been split into 7,000 groups of four, consisting of a health worker, a community representative, a civil society representative and an assistant. A key goal of the campaign is to identify those trying to conceal infections, President Ernest Bai Koroma told national radio, adding that he predicted a 15-20-per-cent rise in suspected Ebola cases by the end of the campaign. Sierra Leone reported 1,673 suspected and confirmed cases on September 14, of which 562 people have died, according to the World Health Organization. The country's emergency operations centre has increased the number of isolation facilities and ramped up logistical support in anticipation of additional cases, coordinator Steven Gaojia said.
