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Tag: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

  • Ebola:10 Liberian officials sacked

    Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has sacked 10 government officials who have been “out of the country without an excuse,” amid a national Ebola crisis.

    She said the officials had shown “insensitivity to our national tragedy and disregard for authority.”

    The 10 were given a one-week ultimatum more than a month ago to return home.

    Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea are the worst-hit countries in an outbreak that has killed more than 2,400.

    The 10 officials include two commissioners, six assistant ministers and two deputy ministers at the justice ministry.

    The BBC reports that a press release issued from the Presidency on Saturday indicated that the officials had been fired “with immediate effect.”

    The press release reads: “Junior officials who are not subject to presidential approval will forfeit all compensation and benefits until they return home to join in the fight against the Ebola virus disease.”

    It listed the names of eight people in the category.

  • Ebola: Liberia president urges more ‘international assistance’

    Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she expects the Ebola crisis gripping her country to worsen in the coming weeks as health workers struggle with inadequate supplies, a lack of outside support and a population in fear.

    “It remains a very grave situation,” Reuters quoted as saying to an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, via Skype from Liberia’s capital Monrovia.

    “It is taking a long time to respond effectively. We expect it to accelerate for at least another two or three weeks, before we can look forward to a decline.”

    The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history has hit at least 2,296 across West Africa, with more than half of those cases in the impoverished and war-damaged state of Liberia, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

    Liberia’s national defense minister told the United Nations Security Council earlier on Tuesday that Ebola posed a threat to the country’s national existence and was “spreading like wild fire and devouring everything in its path.”

    Sirleaf said Liberia’s response to the disease was hobbled by a lack of treatment and testing centers, a dearth of health care workers, and persistent fear and ignorance of the disease among the country’s population.

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  • Ebola keeps Liberian President away from water conference

    Ebola keeps Liberian President away from water conference

    Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is absent at the 24th World Water Week in Stockholm Sweden.

    No thanks to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)  ravaging her country.

    She is the Grand patron of the Global Water Partnership and was billed to deliver the keynote address.

    In a prepared statement, Sirleaf said there was an urgent need to address the issue of water and sanitation, especially in the view of the outbreak of the EVD in West Africa.

    According to the World Bank, 2.8 billion people live in areas of high water stress while 2.5 people have unreliable or no access to electricity. By 2035, the World Bank estimates that energy consumption will increase by 35 percent which will also drive up the demand for water by 85 percent, putting pressure in scarce water resources, especially in the developing countries.

    Speaking on the sideline of the conference,  Minister for Water Resources Mrs. Sarah Ochekpe said Nigeria is blessed with enourmous water resources but that her ministry is still working towards ensuring that 100 per cent of Nigerians have access to potable drinking water at all times.

    Mrs Ochekpe: “From our own analysis, about 70 per cent of Nigerians have access to potable water. But our desire is to see that 100 per cent of Nigerians  have access to potable water on a 24-hour basis and seven days a week.”

    The World Water Week,  which started as a research symposium in 1991, draws environmentalists, government officials, intergovernmental agencies, academics, civil society  activists and researchers together to fashion a way whereby affordably potable water will be available globally.

    Mrs Ochekpe said while Nigeria is building many more dams to generate hydro-power to complement what is derived from thermo and gas energy to boost electricity supply, there is a proportionate use of water for power generation.

    She said water and power are interdependent, as water is important in generating power.

    “Discussions are on to emphasize the importance between energy and water to show that the two are important in global development. Generally, we need water generate energy and we are working on that,” she said.

    She said with the investment, the Federal Government was making on energy generation, Nigerians would soon witness significant growth in the economy.

    She added that her ministry was working  in collaboration with the ministries of power, agriculture and environment to see how water and energy can be appopriately utilised without hurting  the other.

    Mrs Ochekpe said despite campaigns in some quarters that African countries should not develop hydro-power technology, Nigeria would continue to pursue it as a solution to the energy crisis.

    She said while Nigeria is blessed with enourmous water resources, the key is to effectively manage the use of water both for energy, agriculture and consumption.

    “Hydro power is clean and renewable energy. It is less expensive. I don’t think Nigeria will subscribe to that clamour not to do hydro power. We are blessed with a lot of water resources. What will we use the water resources for?”

     

  • Liberia’s president apologises over death of health workers

    Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf yesterday apologised for the high death toll among the country’s healthcare workers who have fought an Ebola outbreak, which has killed nearly 1,000 people in three countries.

    President Sirleaf pledged up to $18 million for the Ebola fight, part of which will be given to health workers to help with insurance and death benefits, to fund more ambulances and to increase the number of treatment centres.

    “If we haven’t done enough so far, I have come to apologise to you,” she told hundreds of health workers who gathered at Monrovia’s City Hall for a meeting with her government.

    The Ebola outbreak, centred on Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, is the worst in history. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday it is an international health emergency that will likely continue spreading for months.

    The disease has put a severe strain on the health systems of affected states and governments have responded with a range of measures, including the declaration of national emergencies in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, which confirmed seven cases of Ebola in Lagos.

    Ebola has reaped a high toll on health workers who have acted as first responders. Liberia alone has lost at least three doctors to the virus and 32 health workers.

    Sierra Leone’s Health Ministry said a senior physician had contracted the disease at the Connaught referral hospital in the capital, Freetown.

    Dr. Modupeh Cole contracted the disease “after treating a patient … who was later proved to have the virus and died,” said ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis.

    Cole was taken to an Ebola treatment centre in eastern Kailahun district, run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, Tunis said.

    He is the latest Sierra Leonean medical practitioner to contract the virus. The country’s leading Ebola doctor, Shek Umar Khan, died of the disease last month and several nurses have died.

    Guinea said earlier on Saturday at a news conference attended by four government ministers that it had closed its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia to halt the spread of Ebola.

     

     

    Authorities said the decision was taken primarily to prevent infected people crossing into Guinea, where at least 367 people have died of Ebola since March and 18 others are being treated in isolation.

    However, state television later said the borders remained open, in an about-face that appeared to highlight the difficulties governments face in coordinating policy in the face of the fast-moving outbreak.

    “Guinea has not closed its borders with Sierra Leone or with Liberia. It’s rather that we have taken health measures at the border posts,” the television channel said.

    A government source said the minister who made the original announcement had not been in possession of accurate information.

    Ebola is one of the deadliest diseases known to humanity. It has no proven cure and there is no vaccine to prevent infection. The most effective treatment involves alleviating symptoms that include fever, vomiting and diarrhoea.

    The rigorous use of quarantine is needed to prevent its spread, as well as high standards of hygiene for anyone who might come into contact with the disease.

    These measures have proved hard to enforce given that Ebola has spread in rural parts of some of the world’s poorest countries. The task is made harder because of mistrust of health workers in areas with inadequate public health services.

    The WHO said on Friday 961 people have died during the outbreak and 1,779 have been infected. The infections and deaths have led to tests on suspected Ebola cases around the world.

    Authorities in Ghana said they were testing samples from a man from Burkina Faso who died while being transported to hospital in the Upper East region.

    “He had fever and was bleeding from the nose so we are testing him for Ebola because we don’t want to take chances,” Yaw Manu, medical head at Bawku Presbyterian Hospital, said by telephone. Ghana has previously conducted about 20 Ebola tests, though none has proved positive.

    Test results for a patient being treated in a Toronto-area hospital for a suspected case of Ebola are due within 24 hours, Ontario’s health ministry said on Saturday. The patient recently came to Canada from Nigeria.

    Authorities in Benin also said they were testing a patient for Ebola, the second suspected case in the country, while Saudi Arabia’s Health Ministry said initial tests on a dead Saudi citizen suspected of having Ebola were negative.

    International alarm over the spread of the disease increased last month when the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer  died in Nigeria after travelling here by plane from Liberia. Since then, other countries with no cases of the disease have taken measures as a precaution.

    Zambia said it would restrict the entry of travellers from countries affected by the virus and would ban Zambians from travelling to those countries, in one of the strictest actions by any nation outside of West Africa.

    Zambia’s Health Ministry also advised against holding any “international events” such as conferences and other gatherings, citing concerns about controlling potential outbreaks.

    Gambia’s Ministry of Transport said any planes flying to the capital, Banjul, should not pick up passengers at airports in Conakry, Freetown or Monrovia.

    American doctor with Ebola is ‘recovering in every way’

    An American doctor who contracted Ebola said he’s “continuing to heal” in an isolation ward at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

    Dr. Kent Brantly, 33, contracted the deadly virus while working in a Liberian Ebola ward with the aid agency Samaritan’s Purse. He was evacuated to the U.S. earlier this month along with coworker Nancy Writebol.

    “There are still a few hurdles to clear before I can be discharged, but I hold on to the hope of a sweet reunion with my wife, children and family in the near future,” Brantly said in a statement.

    Brantly is the first-ever Ebola patient to be treated in the U.S. and the first human to receive the experimental serum known as ZMapp. According to reports, Brantly’s condition deteriorated so quickly that doctors in Africa decided to give him the drug in a last-ditch effort to save him.

    Brantly’s condition started to improve dramatically within an hour after getting the serum, according to Samaritan’s Purse, but it’s unclear if the improvement was directly related to the medication. After his health stabilized, Brantly was evacuated on a specially outfitted plane to Atlanta, Georgia, where he has spent almost two weeks in a hospital isolation ward.

    Writebol, 59, also survived after getting the serum and is recovering at Emory University Hospital.

    At least 1,145 people have died in the worst-ever Ebola outbreak, which spans Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the World Health Organization.