--- title: Sierra Leone Makes Hiding Ebola Patients Illegal description: Perpetrators can get up to two-year prison sentences canonical: https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/ author: Sam Frizell article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-23T14:26:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:49.357Z article:section: Health og:title: Sierra Leone Makes Hiding Ebola Patients Illegal og:description: Perpetrators can get up to two-year prison sentences og:url: https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta564fc8608ba1f0b/6986a0a8f983e7790504f590/453617712.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: SLEONE-HEALTH-EBOLA-WEST-AFRICA og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Sierra Leone Makes Hiding Ebola Patients Illegal twitter:description: Perpetrators can get up to two-year prison sentences twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta564fc8608ba1f0b/6986a0a8f983e7790504f590/453617712.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # It's Now Illegal to Hide Ebola Patients in Sierra Leone > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=40a84c6d-5ef1-401a-88a0-4775e0b37ffc&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_ by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Aug 23, 2014 2:26 PM UTC  A Sierra Leone government burial team with the coffin of Dr Modupeh Cole, Sierra Leone's second senior physician to die of Ebola, at the MSF facility in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, on Aug. 14, 2014. A Sierra Leone government burial team with the coffin of Dr Modupeh Cole, Sierra Leone's second senior physician to die of Ebola, at the MSF facility in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, on Aug. 14, 2014. Carl De Souza—AFP/Getty Images by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Aug 23, 2014 2:26 PM UTC In a move meant to help the country more effectively combat a deadly Ebola outbreak, Sierra Leone approved a measure Friday that would impose [jail time](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/sierra-leone-makes-hiding-ebola-patients-illegal) on anyone caught hiding someone infected with the virus. The law, an amendment to the country’s 1960 Public Health Act, imposes prison sentences of up to two years for violators, the Associated Press reports. Sierra Leone has recorded at least 910 cases and 392 deaths as part of the current outbreak, according to the World Health Organization. Many cases, however, go unrecorded when families hide patients out of fear of high fatality rates and the stigma that comes with a positive diagnosis. \[[_AP_](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/sierra-leone-makes-hiding-ebola-patients-illegal)\] ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/"},"headline":"It's Now Illegal to Hide Ebola Patients in Sierra Leone","datePublished":"2014-08-23T14:26:43.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:49.357Z","description":"Perpetrators can get up to two-year prison sentences","url":"https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/","keywords":["Infectious Disease"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta564fc8608ba1f0b/6986a0a8f983e7790504f590/453617712.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam Frizell","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta564fc8608ba1f0b/6986a0a8f983e7790504f590/453617712.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"SLEONE-HEALTH-EBOLA-WEST-AFRICA","caption":"SLEONE-HEALTH-EBOLA-WEST-AFRICA","creditText":"Carl De Souza—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/","name":"It's Now Illegal to Hide Ebola Patients in Sierra Leone"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3164724/its-now-illegal-to-hide-ebola-patients-in-sierra-leone/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```