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Sierra Leone tells residents to stay home for 3 days in final push to stop Ebola

In this photo taken on Wednesday, March 11, 2015, a health worker holds up his arms after he and others buried a person that they suspect died form the Ebola virus at a new graveyard on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia.
In this photo taken on Wednesday, March 11, 2015, a health worker holds up his arms after he and others buried a person that they suspect died form the Ebola virus at a new graveyard on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Abbas Dulleh

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – Sierra Leone’s 6 million people are being confined to their homes for three days beginning Friday as the West African nation resorts again to a sweeping shutdown in a final push to stamp out Ebola.

Thousands of teams will fan out around the country, knocking on doors to remind people how Ebola is spread and how to prevent it. In the hot spots – the regions around the capital and in the north – health workers will also search for Ebola cases.

Alfred Palo Conteh, the head of Sierra Leone’s Ebola response, says a major goal of the campaign is to fight complacency, more than a year after the outbreak was declared in West Africa.

Ebola has infected nearly 12,000 people in Sierra Leone.

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