Sierra Leone 'hero' doctor's death exposes slow Ebola response

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Sierra Leone 'hero' doctor's death exposes slow Ebola response

By Umaru Fofana and Daniel Flynn FREETOWN/DAKAR (Reuters) - When two American aid workers recovered from Ebola after being treated with an experimental drug, the grieving family of Sierra Leone's most famous doctor wondered why he had been denied the same treatment before he died from the deadly virus. Sheik Umar Khan was a hero in his small West African country for leading the fight against the worst ever outbreak of the highly contagious hemorrhagic fever, which has killed 1,427 people mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. When Khan fell sick in late July, he was rushed to a treatment unit run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) where doctors debated whether to give him ZMapp, a drug tested on laboratory animals but never before used on humans. Khan is among nearly 100 African healthcare workers to have paid the ultimate price for fighting Ebola, as the region's medical systems have been overwhelmed by an epidemic which many say could have been contained if the world had acted quicker.

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