Ebola centers in Sierra Leone overflowed on Wednesday as health workers combed the streets of the capital, Freetown, for patients, after the government launched a major operation to contain the epidemic in West Africa’s worst-hit country.
Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma said on national television that travel between all parts of the country had been restricted as part of “Operation Western Area Surge,” and public gatherings would be strictly controlled in the runup to Christmas.
In the Devil Hole neighborhood just outside Freetown, Ebola surveillance officers questioned Ibrahim Kamara as he sat in a discarded vehicle tire, his eyes glassy and his breath coming in gasps.
Photo: Reuters
“Is the body weak?” a surveillance officer shouted.
Kamara, 31, nodded despondently, while onlookers gathered round.
“Vomiting?” the officer asked.
Kamara nodded again.
Kamara’s wife, Adama Tarawallie, said a neighbor had died last Saturday from Ebola-like symptoms. When they had tried to take a taxi to hospital, the driver made them get out when he discovered her husband was ill.
The surveillance officers wrote down the couple’s address and the names of five family members in their household, before calling an ambulance.
Such street-by-street searches form a key part of a month-long push by the government, a British task force and international groups in the populous west of Sierra Leone, where the epidemic is raging. Their aim is to score a breakthrough against the disease within four to six weeks.
Sierra Leone, neighboring Guinea and Liberia are at the heart of the world’s worst recorded outbreak of Ebola. Rates of infection are rising fastest in Sierra Leone, which now accounts for more than half of the 18,603 confirmed cases of the virus.
The death toll from the epidemic had risen to 6,915 as of Sunday, the WHO said on Wednesday, adding that the increase in cases in Sierra Leone appeared to have slowed, although 327 new cases were confirmed there in the past week.
Shortages of resources, strikes by unpaid healthcare workers and logistical challenges have dogged the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone.
The ambulance meant to collect Kamara took three hours to arrive in Devil Hole, where he had already been waiting for six hours on the street. A nurse in the ambulance said some holding centers were already full as a result of the surge.
When the ambulance drove away, Kamara left behind a red blanket. It was immediately sprayed with disinfectant by the Ebola response team while his wife watched expressionless.
At the King Tom Cemetery in Freetown, weary grave diggers clothed head to foot in protective waterproof yellow clothing said that they had buried 51 people on Wednesday alone.
With the cemetery already full, burial teams have expanded the site to a former rubbish dump, angering some bereaved families. Syringes and rusting iron lay in empty graves, while the burial teams had to throw stones at pigs roaming among the rubbish to keep them away from the dead.
Health officials are alarmed by the widespread transmission in Freetown, similar to an eruption of Ebola in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, in August that is only now being brought under control.
According to the government plan, health workers will seek victims and anyone with whom they have had contact, transporting the infected to new British-built treatment centers.
“Given the efforts we have undertaken we would expect to see a significant decrease in cases within several weeks,” Tom Frieden, director of the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a visit to Freetown.
The program showed some early signs of progress. Russell Macleod, a British military consultant with the surveillance team in the Western command and control center in Freetown, said they received a record number of alerts that morning.
By lunchtime, they exceeded Tuesday’s total by 50 percent, with 140 alerts on the Ebola hotline. In response, the live case management team dispatched teams to 52 suspected cases, he said.
As part of the efforts, Koroma said worshippers on Christmas Day must return home after services and other festivities are banned. New Year’s Eve services must stop by 5pm, while New Year’s Day festivities are prohibited.
The government also banned Sunday trading and halted Saturday shopping at noon, Koroma said.
“This is the festive season where Sierra Leoneans often celebrate with families in a flamboyant and joyous manner, but all must be reminded that our country is at war with a vicious enemy,” he said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
France on Friday showed off to the world the gleaming restored interior of Notre-Dame cathedral, a week before the 850-year-old medieval edifice reopens following painstaking restoration after the devastating 2019 fire. French President Emmanuel Macron conducted an inspection of the restoration, broadcast live on television, saying workers had done the “impossible” by healing a “national wound” after the fire on April 19, 2019. While every effort has been made to remain faithful to the original look of the cathedral, an international team of designers and architects have created a luminous space that has an immediate impact on the visitor. The floor shimmers and
CHAGOS ISLANDS: Recently elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told lawmakers that the contents of negotiations are ‘unknown’ to the government Mauritius’ new prime minister ordered an independent review of a deal with the UK involving a strategically important US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, placing the agreement under fresh scrutiny. Under a pact signed last month, the UK ceded sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, while retaining control of Diego Garcia — the island where the base is situated. The deal was signed by then-Mauritian prime minister Pravind Jugnauth and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Oct. 3 — a month before elections in Mauritius in which Navin Ramgoolam became premier. “I have asked for an independent review of the
LAOS: The bars of bustling Vang Vieng remain open, but information on the investigation into the deaths of six backpackers from suspected methanol poisoning is scarce The music is still playing and the alcohol is still flowing at the bars along one of the party streets in Vang Vieng. Inside a popular venue, a voice over the speaker announces a special offer on beers, as disco lights flicker on the floor. Small paper flags from nations across the world — from the UK to Gabon — hang from the ceiling. Young people travel from all corners of the globe to party in the small town nestled in the Laos countryside, but Vang Vieng is under a global spotlight, following a suspected mass methanol poisoning that killed six
RSS