Protesters burn treatment centers, attack healthcare workers to retrieve bodies of Ebola victims
The Ebola outbreak has sparked a wave of misinformation that health officials linked to violent assaults on healthcare workers and attacks on healthcare centers.
Assessment
Communities already reeling from an Ebola outbreak are now turning on the very healthcare workers trying to contain it, burning treatment centers and attacking staff to recover victims' bodies. Misinformation is driving the violence, which threatens to collapse the medical response and accelerate the outbreak's spread. The immediate danger is that the epidemic will spiral further out of control if trust cannot be restored and access to patients secured.