Sierra Leone is starting house-to-house searches for Ebola patients and will ban New Year’s Day parties in a new push to combat the epidemic.
Health workers will seek out Ebola victims and anyone with whom they have had contact, transporting those infected to new British-built treatment centres, according to a government plan announced this week.
Sierra Leone, 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 and the country has more than half of the 18,000 confirmed cases of the virus.
President Ernest Bai Koroma said that under the measures, worshippers on Christmas Day must return home after services, and other festivities are banned.
New Year’s Eve services must stop by 5pm local time, while New Year’s Day festivities are prohibited altogether.
“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,” Mr Koroma said in a nationwide address.
The government was also imposing restrictions on travel between districts, a ban on Sunday trading and an end to Saturday shopping at noon, Mr Koroma said.
The new measures are part of a month-long surge in and around the capital Freetown that aims to make a breakthrough against the disease within four to six weeks, the head of the British taskforce, Donal Brown said.
Up to one million facing hunger: UN
On Wednesday UN food agencies said that border closures, quarantines and crop losses in West African nations battling the Ebola virus could lead to as many as one million people going hungry.
The deadly haemorrhagic fever that has killed more than 6,900 people has severely disrupted daily life in the worst-hit nations.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Program said the disease and the resulting restrictions had “caused a significant shock to the food and agriculture sectors in the affected countries”.
“The loss of productivity and household income due to Ebola-related deaths and illness as well as people staying away from work, for fear of contagion, is compounding an economic slowdown in the three countries,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
Restrictions put in place to curb the disease were also “seriously hindering people’s access to food, threatening their livelihoods, disrupting food markets and processing chains, and exacerbating shortages stemming from crop losses”.
Half-a-million people are currently in severe danger of going hungry, but this could “top one million by March 2015 unless access to food is drastically improved and measures are put in place to safeguard crop and livestock production”.
Labour shortages have interrupted planting and weeding of crops, while fear of contagion is keeping people away from markets.
“The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been a wake-up call for the world,” WFP emergency response coordinator Denise Brown said.
“The virus is having a terrible impact on the three worst-hit countries and will continue to affect many people’s access to food for the foreseeable future.
“While working with partners to make things better, we must be prepared for them to get worse.”
UN officials said UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon will travel to Ebola-hit countries in West Africa this week to raise awareness about the health crisis.
The UN chief is to visit Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mali to take stock of international efforts to beat back the disease.
Reuters/AFP