FREETOWN: Shoppers crowded the streets and markets of Sierra Leone’s capital on Thursday, stocking up for a three-day shutdown when volunteers will identify people infected with Ebola and hand out 1.5 million bars of soap, as authorities struggle to slow an accelerating outbreak.

The outbreak sweeping West Africa has also touched Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal, and is believed to have sickened more than 5,300, according to figures released by the World Health Organisation on Thursday.

In a sign that the outbreak is picking up steam, more than 700 of those cases were recorded in the last week for which data is available. The disease is now estimated to have killed more than 2,600 people; most deaths have been in Liberia. But the World Health Organisation has said that the official toll is probably a gross underestimate and that most patients are at home — and infecting others in the community — not in treatment centres.

In an attempt to slow the outbreak and identify the sick in hiding, Sierra Leone’s six million people must stay home starting Thursday at midnight, except for thousands of volunteers who will go house-to-house delivering bars of soap and information about how to prevent Ebola.

More than six months into the world’s largest Ebola outbreak, there are still affected areas without access to water or soap, WHO said on Thursday.

Authorities have said they also expect to discover hundreds of new cases during the Friday, Saturday and Sunday exercise.

Many people during this outbreak have not sought treatment for Ebola out of fear that hospitals are merely places people go to die. Still others have been turned away by centers overwhelmed by the increasing number of patients.

Sierra Leone’s government says it has prepared screening and treatment centers to accept the expected influx of patients after the shutdown.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2014