Ebola: Danger in Sierra Leone, Progress in Liberia
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH
ABCNews.com
Oct 30, 2014
Liberia is making some progress in containing the Ebola outbreak while Sierra Leone is “in a crisis situation which is going to get worse,” the top anti-Ebola officials in the two countries said.
The people of both countries must redouble efforts to stop the disease, which has infected more than 13,000 people and killed nearly 5,000, the officials said. Their assessments underscore that Ebola remains a constant threat until the outbreak is wiped out. It can appear to be on the wane, only to re-emerge in the same place or balloon elsewhere if people don’t avoid touching Ebola patients or the bodies of those who succumb to the disease.
“We need to go ahead to stop the transmission in order to arrest the situation,” Palo Conteh said late Wednesday in the Sierra Leone capital, in his first press conference since the president this month appointed him CEO of the National Ebola Response Center. Conteh was previously the defense minister.
“Today we have a new and vicious enemy, an enemy that does not wear uniform, that … attacks anyone that comes into contact with (it) and if unchecked will ravage our beautiful land and its fine people,” he said.
The outbreak has taken a particularly high toll on health workers, sickening more than 520, and greatly reducing the health system’s capacity to respond in the three most-affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Those countries already had too few health workers before the crisis. Now many health workers are too frightened to treat Ebola patients because they often have inadequate protection.
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