Sierra Leone has placed hundreds of homes in the capital under Ebola quarantine, in a huge blow to its recovery less than a month after lifting travel restrictions.
“Some 700 homes have been quarantined for 21 days in the tourism and fishing community of Aberdeen in the west of the capital Freetown, after the death of a fisherman who was later diagnosed Ebola positive,” the National Ebola Response Centre’s Obi Sesay said.
The West African nation of six million had seen almost 11,000 cases and 3,363 deaths during the epidemic which has raged in West Africa for more than a year.
Freetown mayor Bode Gibson, who visited Aberdeen, said he was “shocked and disappointed” as the case had shattered expectations that the city was approaching the milestone of zero new cases in its weekly count.
“The lifting of the free movement ban was to allow residents to resume trade, not for them to become complacent and behave irresponsibly to increase the spread of the disease,” he said.
Arouna Taylor, a resident of Aberdeen, said canoes from Ebola hotspots like Port Loko further up the coast were docking in the area and bringing the virus with them.
“Boats are suspected to be bringing sick people at night for treatment in the capital, so the development has not come as a surprise,” he said.
This new struggle with the disease comes less than a month after president Ernest Bai Koroma pointed to a “steady downward trend” in new cases and lifted country-wide quarantines and travel bans.
When the measures – which impacted half the population – ended on January 23, the president said “victory is in sight”.
Optimism gives way to renewed concern
But optimism that the worst was over gave way to renewed concern on Wednesday as the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported the number of new confirmed cases rising across Sierra Leone and Guinea for the second week running.
Transmission remained “widespread” in Sierra Leone, which reported 76 new confirmed cases in the week to February 8, according to the WHO.
“Twenty or more confirmed cases have been discovered in the last few days and we have opened a control centre to deal with the crisis,” Mr Sesay told reporters.
“We are on top of the situation and people should not panic.”
Mr Sesay said the Aberdeen area, which includes the popular Lumley Beach tourist resort, had been “flooded” with surveillance officers and contact tracers to ensure the death did not turn into a serious outbreak.
The news has been more encouraging in Liberia, which saw the most deaths at the peak of the epidemic in September and October but registered just three new confirmed cases in the week to February 8.
The Liberian government has announced it will reopen schools next week, after a six-month closure to slow the spread of the epidemic, while Sierra Leone plans to do so at the end of March.
More than 1.3 million children have already returned to classes in Guinea since schools reopened on January 19, according to UNICEF.
It came as the United States began to withdraw a West African Ebola military mission, based mainly in Liberia, which peaked at 2,800 troops, leaving no more than 100 soldiers in the region by the end of April.
AFP