Sierra Leone quarantines 700 after new Ebola death

Sierra Leone quarantines 700 after new Ebola death

Health authorities in Sierra Leone said Tuesday they had quarantined almost 700 people as they battled to contain a new outbreak of Ebola which killed a 16-year-old girl.
The teenager died Sunday in a rural suburb of the city of Makeni, in a northern
province that had not recorded a single case of the deadly virus in nearly six
months.
“Over 680 people in the village of Robureh are now under a 21-day quarantine,”
Amadu Thullah, a spokesman for the local Ebola response centre told AFP.
The centre said those locked down included her parents, close relatives and
classmates.
“They are classified as high risk although they have not exhibited any signs and
symptoms of the disease,” added health ministry spokesman Seray Turay.
“The surveillance team of the Ebola response centre have intensified their
investigations and is working to nip the issue in the bud.”
The girl’s death came two weeks after a 67-year-old food trader was killed by the
tropical fever in the neighbouring district of Kambia, but the two outbreaks are
not linked.
The National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) said 1,524 people were in quarantine
across the two districts.
A spokesman for the local response team told AFP morale was extremely low in
affected area of Makeni, the country’s largest northern city.
“It is a wake-up call that Ebola is still in the country but we have an
overwhelming turnout of our partners (and) the coordination response is
fantastic,” he added.
On August 24, President Ernest Bai Koroma led a festive ceremony celebrating
the discharge of Sierra Leone’s last known Ebola patient, from a Makeni hospital.
No new cases had been recorded in more than two weeks, allowing Sierra Leone
to join neighbouring Liberia in the countdown to being declared Ebola-free.
The city is located in Bombali district, bordering Guinea. The district last reported
a case nearly six months ago, official records show.
Robureh residents told AFP by telephone the “once vibrant community” had
become “as silent as a graveyard” with people shut in their homes.
“Not even the chirpy songs of birds are heard,” said 45-year-old farmer Alimamy
Sesay, whose sister is in quarantine.
“Everything is at a standstill, few people woke up this morning to go to their
farms and I dont know what tomorrow will bring.”
Officials figures show the west African outbreak of Ebola has killed more than
11,000 of 28,000 people infected since first emerging in December 2013 in
Guinea, with Liberia the hardest hit.
Experts acknowledge that poor monitoring, especially early in the outbreak, means that the real death toll could be signficantly higher.