75% of Ebola Victims are Women: This is Why

About 75 per cent of people contracting Ebola are women because they are often the primary care-givers, nurses and traders within their communities, health officials have said.

The disease, which has claimed the lives of at least 1,229 people across Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, is disproportionality infecting women as the outbreak spreads across West Africa.

Julia Duncan-Cassell, Liberia’s minister for gender and development, said health teams at task force meeting in Liberia found three-quarters of those who were infected or died from Ebola were female.

She told the Washington Post: “Women are the caregivers — if a kid is sick, they say, ‘Go to your mom.’ 

“The cross-border trade women go to Guinea and Sierra Leone for the weekly markets, [and] they are also the caregivers. Most of the time when there is a death in the family, it’s the woman who prepares the funeral, usually an aunt or older female relative.”

The Ministry of Health in Liberia also said about 75 per cent of the Ebola deaths it has counted so far have been women, Buzz Feed reports.

Suafiatu Tunis, a spokesperson for Community Response Group and a leader of the Social Mobilization Committee on Ebola said female family members are also typically expected to nurse and tend to sick family members, increasing their risk of contracting the disease even further.

Women in West Africa are also the traditional birth attendants, nurses and the cleaners and laundry workers in hospitals.

Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids, making hospital transmission the likely method by which it would be passed on to large numbers of people.

Maricel Seeger, a WHO spokeswoman in Monrovia, Liberia, said reaching women and educating them on the disease is crucial to tackling the virus’ spread, as they play a major role “as conduits of information in their communities”.

“By reaching the women, they are reaching those who can best protect their families, and their own health,” she said.

Liberia has the highest death toll and its number of cases is rising the fastest. In response, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has ordered West Point sealed off and imposed a night-time curfew.

At least 50,000 people live on the half-mile-long point, which is one of the poorest and most densely populated neighbourhoods of the capital.