This morning, Getty Images’ senior staff photographer John Moore gave a chilling first-hand account to NPR of locals in Liberia attacking an Ebola virus isolation ward over the weekend. The epidemic, which the attackers believed to be a government-orchestrated hoax, Moore says, has claimed over 1000 lives across four countries in West Africa this year, Liberia being the hardest hit. Moore has been photographing in the Liberian capital of Monrovia since August 13 when he flew over from New York on a near-empty airliner, aboard which Liberian Foreign Affairs Minister was hand-transporting the experimental Ebola-fighting drug, ZMapp.
Below are some of his most powerful photographs filed since last Wednesday, including a brutal sequence from a blue-walled Ebola containment center which was once a US-aid funded elementary school. There, he explains, the recently diagnosed and relatively healthy had been quarantined alongside the dead and dying. Hear more about what it’s like to photograph in infectious places and quarantine zones on NPR, and follow John Moore on Twitter.
ANIMAL previously featured the work of photojournalists Mario Tama covering Brazil in the lead up to the World Cup, Kevin Frayer covering India’s massive general elections, Brendan Hoffman covering the crisis in Ukraine and more. Click through on each photo for extended captions.
(Lead Image: John Moore/Getty Images; Caption: Umu Fambulle tries to help her husband Ibrahim after he fell and was knocked unconscious in an Ebola ward on August 15, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia.)
