Tackling a deadly foe

AMID THE gloom and doom, the despondency and despair, something positive has come out of Africa in the last few days. However, this development has been overshadowed by other global events, which have enjoyed wider media coverage.

This is the declaration by the World Health Organisation that Sierra Leone is free of Ebola. Since Sierra Leone recorded its first case in May last year, 3 589 people have died, including 221 health-care workers, and there have been 8 704 infections.

At the height of the epidemic, the streets of the capital Freetown and other places were a sorry sight. Hospital vans were picking up patients too weak to walk and taking them to treatment centres. The bodies of those who had succumbed to the haemorrhagic fever were sometimes left in the open, awaiting transport to the overflowing morgues.

At the weekend, Freetown celebrated as the WHO delivered the good news. Saturday marked 42 days – twice the maximum Ebola incubation period – since the last confirmed patient was discharged from hospital.

WHO representative Dr Anders Nordstrom told the crowd: “The world had never faced an Ebola outbreak of this scale and magnitude and the world has never seen a nation mobilising its people and resources as Sierra Leone did. The power of the people of Sierra Leone is the reason why we could put an end to this outbreak today.”

The resilience of Sierra Leoneans has to be admired. The tiny country, with its neighbours Liberia and Guinea, has borne the brunt of the Ebola onslaught.. The outbreak decimated families, the health system, the economy and social structures.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was first reported in March 2014 and rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease since its discovery in 1976. The current epidemic has killed just over 11 300.

Sierra Leone shows it can be defeated.