Palo Conteh, Sierra Leone Ebola chief
By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Paramount Chiefs in Kono have blockaded the district for 13 days effective yesterday – 10 December – in a bid to curb the spread of Ebola. It comes as the UN World Health Organisation sounded the alarm on the spate of the rise of the disease in the district.
In a 6 December press release announcing the bye-law, the council of chiefs said “no commercial vehicles, motor bikes or people will be allowed entry without passes.”
They say only “essential vehicles like ambulances, fuel tankers, haulage vehicles containing food stuffs, vehicles belonging to banking institutions, security forces, nongovernmental organisations and the National Ebola Response Centre” will be allowed entry to the district.
The release furthers that the night time curfew already in force will be strict enforce starting at 10pm.
A WHO release says the situation is worsening in the diamond rich district. A joint UN/CDC and Sierra Leone government delegation that visited one of the affected areas discovered that 87 bodies were buried in 11 days among them health workers.
It says the partners are now “rallying all-comers in a massive build up to contain this burgeoning Ebola outbreak” in an area bordering Guinea where they found “a worse-than-expected scene”.
The release says the team of health workers in the areas affected "simply ran out of resources and were overrun with gravely ill people”
Eight of the district’s 15 chiefdoms are said to be affected.
“The surveillance officers had no vehicles. WHO and CDC quickly sent more investigators and rugged trucks” the release says, adding: “They uncovered a grim scene” with bodies piled up laving “the only area hospital, ill-equipped to deal with the dangerous pathogen”.
Five days before the team arrived, 25 people had died “in the hastily cordoned off section of the main hospital serving as a makeshift Ebola holding center”.
The country’s director of disease prevention and control, Dr Amara Jambai says the situation is just the tip of the iceberg.
The release says help is arriving in the affected areas with “NERC and MoHS for the Government of Sierra Leone and UNMEER with WHO support are connecting ready-to-help partners with an all-out multi-agency response to critical needs on the ground”.
WHO field staff are also said to be sharing expertise with surveillance investigators and infection controllers while doctors from Partners in Health and Wellbody Alliance are also helping out in outlying health posts.
The International Federation of the Red Cross has been instructed to build a new treatment centre “on a tight timetable, while they disinfect the hospital with MoHS and create a temporary safe holding unit”.
The ministry of local government has disbursed to paramount chiefs an undisclosed amount of money to enhance their fight against the disease within 21 days.
Meanwhile the Koidu New Sembehun City Council (KNSCC) has condemned the quarantining of the entire district calling it “unilateral and uncalled for”.
The Chief Administrator of KNSCC, Alhaji Alhaji Bangura, told Politico, in an exclusive interview, that the decision “has the tendency to undermine the fight against Ebola.”
“It was not necessary to quarantine the district because it has no holding and treatment centres and has only one ambulance delivering Ebola positive cases and specimen to Kailahun and Kenema districts in addition to other logistical and financial constraints,” he said.
He added: “it is paradoxical and confusing to quarantine the people and at the same time uphold the existing 10pm curfew for the same people.”
He said the chiefs had only arrived at the decision on 6 December and it came into effect on the 10 “without informing institutions in the Ebola fight like the councils, military and police officers, the Office of the National Security, civil society organisations, the medics and nongovernmental organisations and other partners who had played vital roles in the fight against Ebola.”
He challenged: “this unilateralism in the fight against the Ebola Virus Disease will not work.”
Motorbike taxi riders, drivers and traders have also condemned the blockade.
Chairman of Council of Paramount Chiefs in district, PC Paul Ngaba Saquee V, who is also coordinating the Kono District Ebola Response Centre, would not talk to Politico despite several attempts to get his reaction.
The president had visited to the district earlier where he spoke of the consequences of failure by any chief to break the chain of transmission within three weeks.
District Medical Superintendent, Dr. Roland Cashon-Mash, welcomed the idea to quarantine Kono but warned that the district was without holding and treatment centres to effectively enhance their activities in the fight.
He said they were using the hospital both as holding and treatment centres which he said had scared away patients with other sicknesses away from the hospital.
© Politico 11/12/14
