By Mustapha Kamara Jnr
Over five hundred people in Tonkolili District in the north of Sierra Leone have been put under quarantine by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation as a result of one new confirmed case of the Ebola virus disease recorded in the district. The case which was reported in Massessebe Village broke a long spell of no-new case in the district, said Retired Major Paulo Conteh, Chief Executive Officer of the National Ebola Centre (NERC).
Amongst those quarantined were medical workers, a traditional healer, members of the burial team in Tonkolili, family members and people suspected of having come in contact with the deceased Ebola victim.
Conteh explained that relatives of the deceased did not call 117 neither did they alert the district medical team about the case when the man fell ill; rather, he said, they took the infected man to the LionHeart Hospital, a private hospital in the district were he was been treated despite the case definition suggesting the possibility of Ebola.
“The mistaken belief that because they were in a silent district, it could not be Ebola meant no EVD test was carried out and the patient was later discharged,” he said.
Conteh said the sick patient, a business man from Freetown , was later taken to a traditional healer, where he later died and was later buried by some members of the burial team in the district who did not follow the standard operational procedure of burial.
Throughout the process to cure the deceased, his father, a taxi driver, was driving the sick man from one place to the other, he added.
“The combination of mistakes means we now have over 500 people in quarantine, some of whom may die,” Rtd Major Palo Conteh, said at his weekly press briefing on Wednesday in Freetown. He blamed the new case in Tonkolili on complacency on the part of medical staff at the LionHeart Hospital, and negligence on the path of heads and other indigenes of the district to adhere to safety measures prescribed by the NERC.
“All the things we have been warning against have combined to make this a classic example of how not to behave during the fight against an infectious disease,” he said.
However, he said he was pleased with the speedy response by NERC to support the District Emergency Response Team (DERC) in managing the unfortunate incident, nothing that there is still a challenge to identify everybody the trader and family members have been in contact with before his death.
Furthermore, Palo Conteh said, NERC has set up a monitoring team which would be visiting, monitoring, assessing and also giving necessary advice to DERC on how to respond to situation of the disease in respective districts.
Meanwhile the NERC boss said that despite the huge number of people in quarantine, the situation is being properly managed according to a standard procedure that was put in place in the Operation Northern Push, the ongoing operation aimed at ending the spread of the disease in its last stronghold in the north of the country.
He advised all Sierra Leoneans to be mindful of strangers and to continue to call and report sick cases to 117. He said the situation in Tonkolili points to the risk movement of people still pose to the fight against the epidemic.
(C) Politico 30/07/15
