Tag Archives: Liberia

Ebola Update (4 June 2015)

On Tuesday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that as long as there is one Ebola case in the West African region “all countries are at risk,” urging all nations to support the final battles aimed at wiping out the deadly disease in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Speaking to a General Assembly meeting on efforts to end the Ebola epidemic, which has killed over 11,100 people mainly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the UN chief stated, “we are on the home stretch now and what happens now is critical.” While Liberia, which was once the worst affected country, has now been declared Ebola-free, Ban has warned that in Guinea and Sierra Leone, “the battle has not yet been won,” and “any lapse in vigilance could allow the virus to spread.” Dr David Nabarro, the UN Ebola chief, told the assembly that the priority is to ensure that the outbreak ends as soon as possible, “which will take several weeks and may take a number of months… But everybody should be ready in case the disease recurs and needs to be controlled, especially in the coming 12 months.” Ban also disclosed that UN agencies who will be taking over responsibility for tackling the outbreak as the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Repose (UNMEER) scales down “will need considerable resources to go the distance and support recovery” in the three hardest-hit countries. UNMEER’s acting chief Peter Jan Graaff has indicated that UNMEER’s office in Mali closed on 31 March while its office in Liberia has handed over its operations to the UN country team. The Sierra Leone office is expected to end operations by the end of June, with Graaff indicating, “UNMEER could complete its transition by July 31 and be closed by the end of August,” noting however that if the situation deteriorates, the timeline could be changed “to ensure that the UN’s political leverage and convening power is maintained.” The UN Secretary General has indicated that he will convene an International Ebola Recovery Conference in New York on 10 July, which will aim to mobilize resources to start early recovery in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) released its latest figures on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As of 31 May, there have been a total of 27,145 reported confirmed, probable and suspected cases of EVD in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with 11,147 reported deaths. In the seven days leading up to 31 May, a total of 25 confirmed cases of EVD were reported from 4 prefectures in Guinea and 3 districts of Sierra Leone,

According to the WHO, “since the week ending 10 May, when a 10-month low of 9 cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) were reported from 2 prefectures of Guinea and 1 district of Sierra Leone, both the intensity and geographical area of EVD transmission have increased.” In the 7 days leading up to 31 May, a total of 13 new confirmed cases were reported in Guinea and 12 in Sierra Leone, with officials indicating that several cases in both countries arose from unknown sources of infection in areas that have not reported confirmed EVD cases for several weeks. This effectively indicates that chains of transmission continue to go undetected. Officials have noted that “rigours contact tracing, active case finding, and infection prevention and control must be maintained at current intensive levels in order to uncover and break every chain of transmission,” and have warned that the onset of the rainy season will make field operations more difficult from now onwards.

Two response teams from Guinea-Bissau have been deployed to the border with Guinea to assess several points of entry and sensitive communities. This is due to the proximity to Guinea-Bissau of the recent cluster of cases that have been reported in the northwestern Guinean prefecture of Boke. So far, the investigation team has not been able to locate the contact who had attended the funeral of a case in Boke and who is believed to have returned to a fishing community in Guinea-Bissau.

Guinea

In the week leading up to 31 May, a total of 13 cases were reported in 4 western prefectures of Guinea.

Seven of these cases were reported from the prefecture of Forecariah, which borders Sierra Leone. Multiple chains of transmission gave rise to cases in 4 of Forcariah’s 10 sub-prefectures, however all cases were either registered contacts of a previous case or had an established epidemiological link to one. Five cases were concentrated in the central areas of the prefecture where the sub-prefectures of Farmoriah, Kaliah, and Moussayah intersect. The remaining cases were reported from the northwestern prefecture of Boke (1 case), which borders Guinea-Bissau; the west coast prefecture of Dubreka (4 cases), which borders the capital city Conakry; and the western inland prefecture of Fria (1 case). The cases in Boke and Dubreka were all registered contacts of cases linked to localized chains of transmission. The case that was reported in Fria however arose from an unknown source and is suspected to have originated from an as-yet unidentified chain of transmission in the neighbouring prefecture of Telimele. Officials have indicated that investigations into the origin of the case in Fria have been complicated by active and passive resistance from communities both in Fria and neighbouring Telimele.

On the ground sources in Guinea have reported that community engagement continues to prove challenging, particularly in all the 4 affected prefectures. There have been several reported incidents of violence that has been directed at field staff during the past week.

Sierra Leone

In the week leading up to 31 May, Sierra Leone reported a total of 12 cases in three districts.

Eight of these cases were reported from a densely populated area of the Kaffu Bullom chiefdom in the district of Port Loko, which is located just north of the capital, Freetown. All but one of these cases were registered contacts of previous cases within quarantined houses in the chiefdom. The additional case is from the same neighbourhood however it was not on a contact list and was living in a non-quarantined home at the time of symptom onset. The other cases were reported in the following districts: Kambia reported its first case for over 2 weeks on 31 May. The case was identified after a post-mortem test of a community death and was not a known contact of a previous case. The remaining three cases were reported from the capital city, Freetown. Officials in Freetown have indicated that at this time, none of those 3 cases can be linked to previous chains of transmission however investigations are at an early stage.

Six People Placed in Isolation in Guinea after Transporting Ebola Victim in Taxi

Six people have been put in isolation in prison after being accused of travelling with a corpse of a relative who had died of Ebola.  If after twenty-one days they do not show any signs of having contracted the deadly virus, they will be tried for violating the health emergency.

According to Guinean authorities, the body was seated upright in a taxi, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans with sunglasses and sandwiched between three others.  The head of Guinea’s Ebola response, Dr Sakoba Keita, has indicated that those now in quarantine in prison had been travelling in a taxi with the body of the police recruit from the town of Forecariah towards the capital, Conakry.  They were stopped at an Ebola checkpoint where security officials became suspicious when the seemingly well-dressed passenger remained motionless.

Guinea is currently battling to control a recent flare up in Ebola cases.  Authorities have reported that relatives of Ebola victims are increasingly transporting their bodies on public transportation, seating the corpses upright between other passengers in a bid to avoid health controls.  According to Dr Keita, actions, such as transporting corpses in taxis, account for the continued spread of the Ebola epidemic.  Figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO) last week reported the highest number of cases in Guinea in more than a month, with at least twenty-seven new cases reported in one week.  They comes as officials were hoping that the outbreak in Guinea was finally coming under control, with neighbouring Liberia recently being declared Ebola-free and Sierra Leone registering only eight cases during the same period.  While it is against the law to transport bodies of Ebola victims from one community to another, according to Rabiatou Serah, a member of an anti-Ebola committee, relatives who are concealing bodies are managing to get past inspection agents.  Nearly 2,500 people have died in the West African country since the Ebola outbreak began more than a year ago.

Due to “a substantial increase” in the weekly total of new Ebola cases in Guinea, the WHO has deployed a response team to the border with Guinea-Bissau because the country’s proximity to a recent cluster of cases reported in the neighbouring Guinean prefecture.  In its latest update, the WHO reported that in the week ending on 17 May, 35 new cases were reported in Guinea and Sierra Leone, effectively the highest weekly total of confirmed cases of Ebola in over a month.  Guinea reported 27 of those cases, compared with seven that were recorded the week before.  A statement released by the WHO disclosed that “this is a substantial increase compared with nine cases reported the previous week.”  It further reported, “the geographical area of transmission has also expanded compared with recent weeks, with a total of six districts reporting cases (three in Guinea, three in Sierra Leone) compared with three the previous week (three in Guinea, one in Sierra Leone),” adding, “because of the proximity to Guinea-Bissau of the recent cluster of cases in the Guinean prefecture of Boke, a response team from Guinea-Bissau has been deployed to the border to assess points of entry… An epidemiological investigation team has also mobilized to ensure any contacts who cross the border are traced.”  The statement further noted, “the cases in Boke were tightly clustered in the coastal sub-prefecture of Kamsar, and initial investigations suggest they may have originated from a chain of transmission in Conakry.”  WHO officials have indicated that while the exact origin of the cluster in Boke remains unknown, an investigation has linked most of the confirmed cases to four probable cases who attended a funeral of another probable case in mid-April, which may have been the source of the outbreak.  Guinea-Bissau has not reported any cases of Ebola.

Liberia Celebrates End of Ebola

On Monday, thousands of Liberians gathered to celebrate the end of Ebola after the country was declared free of the deadly disease that has killed more than 4,700 people. Several dignitaries participated in the celebration, including the President of Togo, along with guests from the African Union, Ghana and Nigeria.   Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf closed the celebrations by recommitting herself to helping the governments and people of neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone to overcome the disease.

In a statement released Saturday 9 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that 42 days had passed since the last person confirmed with the virus in Liberia was buried. On Monday, the Liberian government declared a public holiday in order to allow workers and students to take part in a festival in the capital city, Monrovia. The ceremony however began on a sombre note, with testimonials from health workers and other staff in the country’s Ebola treatment units (ETU’s) as well as survivors and body disposal team members.

The WHO has hailed the eradication of the deadly disease in Liberia as an enormous development in the crisis, which has affected the West African region for over a year. However the United Nations agency has warned that because outbreaks are continuing in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, the risk remains high that infected people could re-enter the country. More than 4,700 people died during the Ebola crisis in Liberia, which remains the hardest-hit country by the outbreak. Neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone continue to report new cases on a weekly basis. While the number of new cases being reported has significantly declined in recent months, officials in both countries have noted that they have had difficulty in tracing new cases.

Latest figures released by the WHO indicate that 26,720 cases have been reported and 11,079 people have died from Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Mali, Sierra Leone and the United States, however officials have warned that the full scale of the Ebola outbreak may have been underreported. The latest outbreak, which was officially confirmed in March 2014, has killed five times more people than all the other known outbreaks combined.

Lowest Number of New Ebola Cases Recorded Since May 2014

According to the latest figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO) this week, data shows the lowest weekly cases of Ebola since May 2014.

In the week leading up to 5 April, a total of 30 confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) were recorded. This is the lowest weekly total since the third week of May 2014. Of the total 55 districts in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone that have reported at least one confirmed case of EVD since the outbreak began, 35 have not reported a case in over six weeks.

While Liberia and Sierra Leone have begun to decommission some treatment centres, the WHO has warned that there has been an increase in unsafe burials, particularly in Guinea, which could lead to more cases.

There have been a total of 25,515 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of EVD in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with 10,572 deaths. In the past 21 days, a total of 191 EVD cases were recorded in the three countries.

Liberia

Since recording one Ebola case in late March, Liberia has not recorded any new cases of the deadly disease since. The last confirmed case passed away on 27 March and Liberia is currently conducting the 42-day countdown to being officially declared free of the disease.

Guinea

Guinea recorded 21 cases of EVD during this reporting period, compared to 57 confirmed the previous week. A total of six Guinean prefectures reported at least one confirmed case of EVD during this reporting period, a decline from the 7 prefectures that reported a case in the previous week. Affected prefectures are in the western area and include the capital city Conakry, which recorded 8 confirmed cases during this reporting period. The nearby prefectures of Coyah (1 case), Dubreka (1 case); Forecariah (6 cases), Fria (1 case) and Kindia (4 cases) also reported cases.

Sierra Leone 

Sierra Leone reported a fifth consecutive weekly decrease from 25 confirmed cases in the week leading to 29 March, to 9 during this reporting period. Over this reporting period, Sierra Leone reported zero cases on 3 days.

Cases were reported in four western districts: Kambia (2 cases), Port Loko (1 case), Western Area Rural (1 case) and Western Area Urban (5 cases), which includes the capital city Freetown.

Liberia Reports New Ebola Case

Liberia has confirmed its first new Ebola case in more than a month, resulting in a major setback as the country had hoped to be soon declared free of the deadly disease.

On Friday, government spokesman Lewis Brown disclosed, “a woman has been confirmed as an Ebola patient… This is a new case after we have gone more than 27 days without a single case. It is a setback.” The woman has been transferred to the ELWA Ebola treatment unit in the capital Monrovia. Dr Francis Kateh, acting head of the Liberia Ebola Case Management team, has disclosed that the patient does not seem to be linked to any of the people on an Ebola contact list and that she has stated that she did not travel recently to any of the neighbouring infected countries. Authorities are now considering the possibility that she had a visitor from outside Liberia who infected her or that “…she may have contracted the virus through sexual intercourse with a survivor.” Officials are now compiling a list of people who came into contact with the patient who will be monitored for symptoms. While Liberia had not reported any new cases for several weeks, health officials warned that even after areas are declared free of the deadly disease, new cases were still possible due to sexual transmission.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) had announced that Liberia had registered no new case of the deadly virus since 19 February. On 5 March, Liberia discharged its last confirmed Ebola patient, Beatrice Yordoldo. In the week leading up to 15 March, surveillance and early warning systems had detected 125 suspected cases of Ebola however none of them tested positive for the deadly virus. Liberia had started its 42-day countdown towards being considered Ebola-free on 4 March and would have been cleared by 15 April.

At the height of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Liberia was the hardest hit country and has seen more than 4,000 deaths. According to the latest figures released by the WHO, since the outbreak began in December 2013, 24,753 people in nine countries have been infected with the virus, and 10,236 have died. All but fifteen of those deaths occurred in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.