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Zakaria Camara and Jennifer Lazuta Correspondents
The Ebola outbreak, which was first declared by Guinea’s Ministry of Health on the evening of March 22, 2014, continues to ravage the country, in large part because information campaigns have failed to bring about comprehensive changes in behaviour and beliefs.

“Some communities are still convinced that there is no Ebola, that Ebola is a myth,” said Damien Queally, the deputy regional director of Plan International, who is co-ordinating the organisation’s Ebola response activities.

“People are still doing traditional practices and washing dead bodies,” he said.

“People are still not reporting cases to the hotlines or treatment centres.”

So despite months of intensive attempts to educate communities about Ebola, including its modes of transmission and prevention measures the virus continues to spread from person to person, community to community. Queally suggested one reason for this might be the choice of messenger.

“In a lot of humanitarian settings, we often don’t appreciate the value of local civil society groups and local NGOs,” he said, citing the success that Plan has had working with traditional leaders in Sierra Leone to promote behaviour change in particularly resistant areas.

“Perhaps something similar needs to be undertaken in Guinea,” he said.

More than 2 200 people have died from Ebola in Guinea, according to the World Health Organisation. In January, it seemed the caseload was finally starting to drop. But then, on March 150, it rose to its highest level since the start of the year, with 95 new reported cases in one week.

“If you are seeing that the virus persists in Guinea, it’s because of a lack of knowledge,” said Ibrahima Soumah, who lives in Guinea’s capital, Conakry.

“Look at Liberia and Sierra Leone (where case numbers have fallen), and compare that to the situation in Guinea. People here continue to wash dead bodies without any safety measures because they don’t know better.”

While Ebola has been recorded in central and eastern Africa since 1976 this is the first time it has made its way to humans in West Africa.

“First and foremost, Ebola is a disease which is not known in Guinea,” said Mamadou Diallo, a cashier at a maternal health clinic in Conakry.

“We keep hearing about it in the media . . . but people are still too uninformed about Ebola to better fight it. One must first believe in it.”

Even health workers had little idea for nearly three months that the “mysterious fever” they were seeing was Ebola. Once it was confirmed, in March 2014, it proved to be quite difficult to get people to accept.

“Our main challenge in Guinea has been getting the right message across,” said Henry Gray, the Ebola task force co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

“It’s very difficult to pass along an unpopular message, especially in places that haven’t heard about Ebola before.”

He added: “It’s interesting to compare (Guinea) to places like Uganda where the message is really understood. If you have an outbreak there, it’s very quick to contain because people get the message.”

This message includes things such as reporting all suspected cases to health authorities, not touching the body of a living or dead Ebola victim, washing your hands with a chlorine or bleach solution and allowing Ebola patients to be treated in a specialised clinic. — Irin