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Tag: Sierra-Leone

  • Ebola death toll hits 7,373 in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea

    The death toll from Ebola in the three worst-affected countries in West Africa has risen to 7,373 among 19,031 cases known to date there, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.

    The latest data, posted overnight on the WHO website, reflected nearly 500 new deaths from the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since previous WHO figures were issued on Dec. 17.

    Sierra Leone accounts for the most cases, 8,759, against 7,819 for Liberia. But Sierra Leone’s death toll of 2,477 is far less than 3,346 recorded in Liberia, leading some experts to question the credibility of the figures reported by Freetown.

    Sierra Leone’s government last week launched a major operation to contain the epidemic in West Africa’s worst-hit country.

    President Ernest Bai Koroma said on national television that travel between all parts of the country had been restricted as part of “Operation Western Area Surge”, and public gatherings would be strictly controlled in the run-up to Christmas.

  • Ebola: Nigerian medics deployed to Sierra Leone

    Ebola: Nigerian medics deployed to Sierra Leone

    In a bid to help with the response to the outbreak of the ravaging Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in some West African countries, about 100 medical workers are expected to depart Nigeria for Sierra Leone.

    The BBC reports that the medical workers include doctors, scientists and hygienists, who have been trained by the medical aid agency, MSF.

    Nigeria’s commitment is part of an African Union promise to send 1,000 medical workers to Ebola-hit areas by the end of this year.

    The response came a day after residents in the Guinean capital, Conakry, protested about the construction of an Ebola treatment clinic in their district.

    It is no more news that the Ebola outbreak has claimed about 6,000 lives in West Africa this year alone.

    The medical workers from Nigeria are the first part of a contingent of about 250 specialists the West African country is deploying to the three countries worst hit by Ebola – Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

    The workers are expected to stay for between three and six months, Nigerian officials say.

     

  • Sierra Leone Ebola doctor dies in U.S.

    Sierra Leone Ebola doctor dies in U.S.

    A surgeon from Sierra Leone who was being treated for Ebola in the US has died, a Nebraska hospital announced.

    Martin Salia, who has US residency and is married to an American, arrived for treatment in the state on Saturday.

    But on Monday morning the Nebraska Medical Center said the 44-year-old had died. He was the second person to die from the virus in the US.

    More than 5,000 people have died in the current Ebola outbreak – almost all of them in West Africa.

    Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan died in Dallas last month after coming to the US to visit relatives.

    “We are extremely sorry to announce that the third patient we’ve cared for with the Ebola virus, Dr Martin Salia, has passed away as a result of the advanced symptoms of the disease,” said the hospital in a statement.

    Dr Salia had worked as a general surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown.

    It is not known whether he was involved in the care of Ebola patients.

    He was suffering from advanced symptoms, including kidney and respiratory failure, when he landed on US soil and was taken to the hospital in Omaha.

    Two other Ebola patients were successfully treated at the unit, which is one of only a handful of specialist treatment centres in the US.

     

  • Ebola stalls Dangote Cement’s expansion in Sierra Leone

    Ebola stalls Dangote Cement’s expansion in Sierra Leone

    Nigeria’s largest company and the continent’s biggest producer of the building material, Dangote Cement Plc (DANGCEM),  said it is delaying a planned expansion in Sierra Leone due to the Ebola outbreak.

    “Sierra Leone was scheduled to start this month, but we had to put the project on hold. When the crisis abates then we’ll immediately start moving ahead,” its Chief Executive Officer, Devakumar Edwin said on a conference call yesterday.

    Companies have slowed investment in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three countries affected by the Ebola outbreak estimated to have killed more than 5,000 people in the sub-region. Dangote Cement’s parent company, Dangote Industries Limited postponed a visiting day for investors in, Lagos, in September amid Ebola fears. Nigeria was declared Ebola-free last month by the World Health Organisation (WO).

    Dangote Cement, controlled by billionaire Chairman Aliko Dangote, expects to have a cement-production capacity of 29 million metric tons in Nigeria by year end. The company plans to expand in 13 other countries on the continent, bringing total capacity to as much as 60 million metric tons by 2016.

    Operations in Cameroon, Senegal and Zambia are set to  begin producing this year, while a plant in Ethiopia will start getting commissioned next month, Edwin said.

    Persistent fuel disruptions to Dangote’s Nigerian plants are expected to ease after gas-supply authorities assured the company they don’t anticipate major disruption within the next six months, according to Edwin. They said supply would come from producers including Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and Exxon Mobil Corp., he said.

    Nigeria sale volumes were down one per cent to 9.8 million tons in the nine months through September, the company said Oct. 31.

    Its group profit for the period fell 10 per cent to N140.5 billion ($844 million) even as revenue climbed 7.3 per cent to N310.2 billion.

    “The gas-supply was a major constraining factor,” Edwin said. The authorities “have reviewed the pipeline integrity, the condition of the gas treatment stations, including the major scheduled maintenance which they have undertaken in the recent past.”

    Dangote Cement’s share price has declined 4.6 per cent this year to N208.89, compared with the 13 per cent drop of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All-Share Index.

  • Lagos health workers for Sierra Leone

    Lagos health workers for Sierra Leone

    Lagos State is to send some health workers who had helped in the containment of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) to Sierra Leone .

    Governor Babatunde Fashola broke the news in  Ikeja  while speaking at a programme to commemorate the 2,700 Days of his administration in office.

    The governor said the health workers were to replicate the state‘s  virus  containment strategies in Sierra Leone  with a view to assisting the Ebola-hit country overcome the health crisis.

    Fashola said although Nigeria was, as of now, free of the disease, there was still the risk of  new infections from cross-border movements.

    He said  the state‘s  planned mission  to Sierra Leone was not  only to assist the country to overcome the challenge, but also reduce the risk  of the disease to countries within the sub-region.

    Sierra Leone accounts for  a substantial number of the over 4,000 global Ebola deaths.

    “Lagos is free from Ebola, Nigeria is free from Ebola. .But that does not mean there cannot be another case. For as long as people are moving from countries to countries, the risk of infections is still there.

    ‘That is why  I appeal to the Federal Government to continue to scrutinise people travelling into Nigeria from land, sea and air from regions where the problem is still ravaging.

    “That is why some of the things the commissioner for health will be announcing very soon is the arrangements we are making to send some of our health workers and volunteers to go and help out in Sierra Leone.

    “That is the only way we ,the whole of Africa and the World can be safe.”

    Fashola  expressed optimism that EVD, just like other infectious diseases, such as cholera that had once  ravaged humanity without remedy, would soon get a cure.

    He said Nigerians needed not live in fear of the disease coming back into the country but urged them to take precautions that would guard against new infections in the country.

    Fashola said the state government  had taken some initiatives  to prevent a return of Ebola in the state.

    Some of the strategies, according to him, include the deployment of screening equipment to schools and hospitals and the construction of sanitary facilities in schools.

    Others are training and retraining of personnel on infectious diseases diagnosis and the sensitisation of residents on how to be safe from the problem.

    Fashola also announced that he had appointed Dr Oluwakemi Sekoni his Scientific Adviser as a move to enhance better response to Ebola disease and other infectious ailments.

    The governor said  the responsibilities of the new adviser would  include providing  public information about infectious diseases for effective response.

    Others are actions and co-ordinating science-based research on food sufficiency, air pollution and helping in  all other things that were likely to improve the general wellbeing of Lagos residents.

    “Today ,I am announcing the appointment of Dr Oluwakemi Sekoni as my Chief Scientific Adviser . She would  be presented  at a formal inductiuon ceremony shortly, “he said.

    Reeling out some of his achievements in the last 100 days, Fashola said the Mainland Power Plant which would supply uninterrupted power to government facilities in mainland area was completed withing the period.

    He said the government also inaugurated a Power Academy that would  train people on all aspects of electricity generation,distribution and transmission and help improve the power sector.

    Fashola said the government also trained no fewer than 3,000 farmers on various aspects of agriculture and supported them with items to support their businesses.

    He said work was sped up at the 70-gallon Adiyan Water Works to improve water supply.

     

  • ‘Money laundering, terrorism financing rate worrisome’

    Threats posed by money laundering (ML) and Terrorist Financing (TF) to West Africa have become pronounced over the past decade, the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), has said.

    In a statement, the agency regretted that knowledge of the two phenomena and the various dimensions of their manifestations are low in the region, adding that a critical factor responsible for this low level of knowledge in the region, is the dearth of local expertise to enable the generation and deepening of knowledge in the emerging field of ML/TF.

    To bridge the gap, GIABA initiated an Annual AML/CFT Research Grant to build regional capacity for research on ML/TF.

    The funds will assist in facilitating the conduct of short-term studies on identified research topics.

    The body has through the grant, been empowering the civil society in Ghana in the implementation of AML/CFT Measures; Financial Inclusion and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT) Standards in Sierra Leone and Money Laundering Through Non-Profit Organisations in West Africa, among other interventions.

    The agency has also been involved in the development of effective civil society interventions for managing cross-border cash flows in the informal sector.

    It said the report on Financial Inclusion and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT) standards in Sierra Leone, which assessed the link between financial inclusion and AML/CFT, showed that while the former helped to lower ML/TF risks, a wholesale implementation of the latter without regard to the economic and financial peculiarities of the country, could exclude most poor individuals and households from the formal banking and financial systems and, by extension, undermine AML/CFT efforts.

  • Sierra Leone records 121 Ebola deaths in ‘a single day’

    Sierra Leone records 121 Ebola deaths in ‘a single day’

    Sierra Leone recorded 121 deaths from Ebola and scores of new infections in one of the single deadliest days since the disease appeared in the West African country more than four months ago, government health statistics has shown.

    The figures, which covered the period through Saturday, put the total number of deaths at 678, up from 557 the day before. The daily statistics compiled by Sierra Leone’s Emergency Operations Centre also showed 81 new cases of the haemorrhagic fever.

    Ebola was first reported in Guinea in March and has since spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone in what has become the worst epidemic of the disease since Ebola was idenitifed in 1976, Reuters reports.

    Smaller outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal were brought under control. The United States last week confirmed its first Ebola case, a Liberian national who had travelled to Texas.

    The overall death toll from the epidemic reached 3,439 out of a total of 7,492 cases in West Africa and the United States as of October 1, the World Health Organization said last week. The United Nations’ agency’s statistics varied from those compiled by Sierra Leone.

    After an initial slow response, international assistance and supplies are now pouring into West Africa.

    The U.S is deploying around 4,000 military personnel to the region to support efforts to combat the outbreak in Liberia, the country worst hit by the disease.

    Britain and China have sent personnel to Sierra Leone. Cuba dispatched a 165-member medical team, including specialists and nurses, to Sierra Leone last week.

    The country’s deputy health and sanitation minister, Madina Rahman, said on Saturday that the Cuban team’s mission would last at least six months.

    She said the team would be deployed to areas across Sierra Leone.

  • Sierra Leone to impose four-day countrywide anti-Ebola ‘lock down’

    Sierra Leone to impose four-day countrywide anti-Ebola ‘lock down’

    SIERRA Leone will impose a four-day, countrywide ‘lockdown’ starting September 18, an escalation of efforts to halt the spread of Ebola across the West African country, a senior official in the president’s office said.

    The move underscores the radical steps West African nations are being pushed to take, over six months into an outbreak that is the worst on record and shows no sign of easing having already killed over 2,100 people since March.

    Citizens will not be allowed to leave their homes between September 18-21 in a bid to prevent the disease from spreading further and allow health workers to identify cases in the early stages of the illness, said Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential adviser on the country’s Ebola task force.

    “The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all,” he told Reuters.

    As of Friday, Sierra Leone has recorded 491 of the total of suspected, probable and confirmed Ebola deaths, according to UN figures.

    Kargbo said 21,000 people would be recruited to enforce the lockdown. Thousands of police and soldiers have already been deployed to enforce the quarantining of towns in Sierra Leone’s worst-hit regions near the border with Guinea.

    Organizations from across the world are rushing funds and equipment to West Africa, but Ebola is spreading faster than ever and experts say the lack of trained staff in weak health systems is a major obstacle to the response.

     

  • Sierra Leone lockdown will not help halt Ebola: MSF

    SIERRA Leone’s proposed countrywide “lockdown” will not help control an Ebola outbreak and could lead to the disease spreading further as cases are concealed, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said yesterday.

    The government plans to order citizens not to leave the areas around their homes for three days from September 19 in a bid to halt new infections and help health workers track down people suffering from the disease,according to  the information ministry.”It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola as they end up driving people underground and jeopardising the trust between people and health providers,” said the group.

    “This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further,” added the group which has been helping fight the world’s biggest outbreak of the disease across West Africa.

    An Ebola outbreak that was first identified in Guinea in March has since spread across much of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases have also been registered in Nigeria and Senegal and the World Health Organisation says more than 2,100 people have died.

    More than six months into the crisis, weak government health systems are still failing to defeat the disease, one of the deadliest on the planet.

  • UK flies home national who contracts Ebola in Sierra Leone

    UK flies home national who contracts Ebola in Sierra Leone

    British national living in Sierra Leone has tested positive for Ebola, the first Briton to fall victim to the deadly disease that has spread across the West African region since March, the Department of Health said on Saturday.

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the current Ebola epidemic – the world’s worst ever with 1,427 documented deaths – will likely take six to nine months to halt.

    Some aid organisations, including medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, have warned that the outbreak, which began in Guinea before spreading to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, is now out of control.

    The WHO conceded on Friday that the hiding of victims and the existence of “shadow zones” where medics cannot go has concealed the true scale of the epidemic.

    Britain’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer John Watson confirmed a British national was among those suffering from Ebola and said medical experts were assessing the situation in Sierra Leone to ensure appropriate care was provided.

    “The overall risk to the public in the UK continues to be very low,” Watson said in a statement.

    No further details about the British national were immediately available, and it was not known whether there were plans to evacuate the patient.

    Ebola, which is passed on by direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons, strikes hardest at healthcare providers and caregivers who work closely with those infected. And dozens of local doctors and nurses have died from the virus in recent months.

    Two American aid workers, who contracted Ebola in neighboring Liberia and were then evacuated, recovered from the disease and were released from a hospital in the United States earlier this week.

    Fear, stigma and denial have led many families to hide their infected loved ones from health officials. In other instances, patients have been forcibly removed from treatment facilities and isolation centers, creating the risk of the disease’s further spread.

    Under-reporting of Ebola cases has been a problem, particularly in Liberia and Sierra Leone, currently the two countries hardest hit by the virus.

    Lawmakers in Sierra Leone on Friday voted overwhelmingly in favor of making the harboring of those infected with Ebola a crime carrying a punishment of two years in prison.

    “The new regulation will provide for summary trial, meaning trial by a magistrate court alone,” Justice Minister Frank Kargbo told Reuters.

     

    As the outbreak has spread across borders from its initial epicenter, governments in the region have introduced increasingly strict travel restrictions.

    The government of Ivory Coast announced late on Friday that it had closed its land borders Guinea and Liberia to try to prevent the virus from crossing onto its territory.

    Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa’s largest economy and the world’s top cocoa producer, had previously imposed a ban on flights to and from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

    Liberia’s Nimba County, which shares a border with Ivory Coast, has seen the number of Ebola cases balloon in recent weeks. According to Moses Massaquoi, the head of Ebola case management at Liberia’s health ministry, 65 cases including 25 confirmed patients have now been reported there.

    “The number of cases in Nimba has spiked recently and it is now an area of concern,” Massaquoi told Reuters.

    The WHO does not recommend travel or trade restrictions for countries affected by Ebola, saying such measures could heighten food and supply shortages. But residents of Ivory Coast’s commercial capital Abidjan voiced support for the government’s decision.

    “I don’t think simply closing the border is enough. We need to go even further,” said Romaric Kouadio, a laboratory technician.

     

    The Philippines on Saturday ordered 115 soldiers to return home from peacekeeping operations in Liberia due to the outbreak there.

    Brussels Airlines, Belgium’s largest carrier, said on Saturday it was cancelling flights to the capitals of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for Sunday and Monday due to new restrictions put in place by Senegal’s aviation authority.

    The company’s flight to Freetown on Friday was denied permission to land for a crew change at the airport in Senegal’s capital Dakar, and the plane was forced to continue on to Casablanca for an unscheduled landing.

    Senegal, West Africa’s humanitarian hub, had announced earlier in the day that it was banning all flights to and from countries affected by Ebola. It also blocked a U.N. aid plane from landing in Dakar.

    “We cannot fly like that. It is pretty dangerous,” Paul Delafaille, Brussels Airlines’ country manager in Sierra Leone, told Reuters.

    A spokesman for the airline, in which Germany’s Lufthansa owns a 45 percent stake, said it was exploring options that would allow it to resume service to the three countries.