Sierra Leone: Koinadugu teams up with WHO to fight Ebola out of Nieni

[Pathfinder]

Location of Koinadugu District in Sierra Leone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koinadugu_District

Sierra Leone News : Koinadugu teams up with WHO to fight Ebola out of Nieni

By Desmond Crowther in Kabala
Oct 29, 2014, 17:14

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has assured the people of Koinadugu district that they were with them to ensure the Ebola Outbreak ravaging parts of the district is quickly quelled. Koinadugu, until a few weeks back, had been the only district unaffected by Ebola in Sierra Leone. WHO Spokesperson in Sierra Leone, Madam Winnie Romeril gave the assurance during a chat with the Awareness Times up in Koinadugu yesterday 28th October 2014.

It is a fact that reports within northern Koinadugu District reveals that a significant percentage of residents in Fankonia Town of Nieni Chiefdom are currently infected with the Ebola Virus Disease. The township which is over one hundred miles away from Kabala, the District Headquarter Town, has recorded several deaths in the last few weeks; with dozens of corpses having to be buried. This writer on a fact-finding trip to the chiefdom, personally counted a dozen corpses buried in one day.

Speaking over Bintumani Radio 93.7 in the night of 27th October 2014, the Public Relations Officer of the Koinadugu Ebola Taskforce, Mustapha Kalash Koroma claimed that ?60 to 70% of residents? in certain areas of Nieni chiefdom, are suspected to now be infected with the Ebola Virus Disease. According to the PRO, the people of Fankonia especially had been hiding the bare truth about the disease occurence for too long before it blew out of control. By which time, the disease had spread to an unbelievable extent. He also informed that most of the people infected had participated in traditional burial ceremonies of an Ebola death.
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http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200526520.shtml

 

[nola_mnr]

Re: Sierra Leone: Koinadugu teams up with WHO to fight Ebola out of Nieni

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/04/ebola-outbreak-sierra-leone

A fresh outbreak of Ebola in a part of Sierra Leone where the virus was thought to have been contained has raised fears of a new, uncontrolled infection chain that could send the death toll soaring.

A Red Cross ambulance team was sent to the remote district of Koinadugu, which had prided itself on being the only area to have kept Ebola at bay, from on Tuesday to urgently collect 30 corpses for medical burial.
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[casey]

Re: Sierra Leone: Koinadugu teams up with WHO to fight Ebola out of Nieni

http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-break-ebola-quarantine-food-124818527.html

Thousands break Ebola quarantine to find food

A group of aid agencies says that thousands of people in Sierra Leone are being forced to violate Ebola quarantines to find food because deliveries are not reaching them.

In order to prevent the spread of Ebola, large swaths of the West African country have been sealed off and within those areas many people have been ordered to stay in their homes. The government, with help from the U.N.'s World Food Program, is tasked with delivering food and other services to those people.

But Jeanne Kamara of Christian Aid in Sierra Leone said Tuesday that there are many "nooks and crannies" in the country that are being missed. Her agency and others that belong to the Disasters Emergency Committee umbrella organization are trying to fill the gaps.

 

[MHSC]

Re: Sierra Leone: Koinadugu teams up with WHO to fight Ebola out of Nieni

Koinadugu has been operating a self-imposed quarantine for four months, thanks to the intervention of an expat businessman, Momah Konte, who returned from Washington and worked with local officials and tribal chiefs to try to prevent the spread.

The Red Cross said an emergency burial team was making the five-hour journey from Freetown on Tuesday to collect the bodies in the Nenie chiefdom east of the district?s capital Kabala.

A spokesman said that there were reports of a further 25 ill with Ebola and another 255 being monitored after coming into contact with the dead and the sick.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/04/ebola-outbreak-sierra-leone

 

[MHSC]

Re: Sierra Leone: Koinadugu teams up with WHO to fight Ebola out of Nieni

The fresh outbreak comes days after a presidential visit to the neighbouring district of Port Loko, where bodies were left in houses and on verandahs for days before the Red Cross collected them nine days ago.

A Cuban medical team had been on standby for weeks in Freetown to operate a new clinic in Port Loko but its opening was delayed after an unconnected NGO international pulled out the plan to manage it.

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A report by the Africa Governance Initiative, set up by Tony Blair, which is supporting the country?s Ebola 117 hotline says there were 12 new cases a day in late October in the rural areas surrounding the capital Freetown, compared with an average of 1.3 cases in early September.

The head of the call centre told the Guardian the call centre was getting four cases a day reported from Koinadugu.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/04/ebola-outbreak-sierra-leone