By David Taylor
One year after Ebola erupted in West Africa, the virus has shown no signs of slowing down. In fact, it’s as strong as ever.
The disease will prove fatal for over three quarters of those diagnosed with the disease in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone’s president Ernest Koroma said the health crisis had become so serious, the future of the nation he governed was at stake.
“The economic development of our country and the lives of our people continue to be threatened by the ongoing presence of Ebola in Sierra Leone. The future of our country and our aspirations of our children are at stake,” he said.
The international effort to slow the outbreak of the disease has been effective, but wiping out the disease completely remains a huge challenge.
That is partly because many communities are secretly touching and handling the dead before they are buried — some for religious reasons.
“In some of these communities when these religious people die, they still wash their body and they still continue to bury those people secretly in the various communities,” Health For All Coalition executive director Charles Mambu said.
So while the fight to tackle the virus continues, the social cost continues to climb.
Plan International Australia disaster risk manager Rohan Kent said the very fabric of the society had been broken.
“We’ve got a food security crisis because people aren’t able to tend the land,” he said.
“There’s a health systems crisis because a lot of the health focus has been on the Ebola disease, as opposed to all the other health issues that are going on in these countries.
“Malaria, vaccinations: they’re not going to the clinics to get the right medicine, the treatment, for fear for being classified as Ebola patients.”
The widening health crisis is now having significant social consequences.
Plan International says close to 17,000 children in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have lost one or both parents to Ebola.
Many of the countries’ orphans are not properly supervised or nourished.
Teenage pregnancies are also on the rise as girls seek a provider to support them.
That trend has been linked an increase in sexual exploitation, with evidence of rampant prostitution.
Sierra Leone enforces lockdown to fight virus spread
Before any of the social challenges can be met, health authorities have to tackle the disease that has so far killed over 9,500 West Africans.
The government of Sierra Leone is resorting to a blanket lockdown of affected communities.
Mr Koroma said the campaign would provide an opportunity for communities to be directly involved in the drive to zero cases, to reflect and pray for the eradication of the disease from the country.
Residents in Sierra Leone’s remaining Ebola hotspots will be confined to their houses for three days this week.
Health officials will carry out house-to-house searches to identify the sick in the north and west, where the virus is spreading fastest.
“This is important,” Mr Kent said.
“What we were probably lacking in the early parts of this response was strong, decisive leadership from some of these countries, and now they are definitely making these strong decisions, and we do applaud them for that.”
While Sierra Leone takes this vital step forward, pressure is now on Guinea to produce some sort of plan to eradicate the disease.
“In Guinea, we are always in a situation where there is denial of the illness or people hiding their patients and refusing to be identified as a contact,” Doctors Without Borders’ Guinea mission head Jerome Mouton said.
“And it is this attitude that prevents us from taking control and really going to the last case.”
Travel bans remain in place for all three affected West African nations — a further hit to a region in desperate need of healing.