By Joseph Lamin Kamara
Secretary General of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party has called on government to review its current arrangement with the British government to ensure British doctors participated actively in the fight against Ebola.
Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie told Politico that the British government was working to help Sierra Leone eradicate Ebola, but it needed “to do a lot more in terms of actively quarantining homes and treating of Ebola-infected persons.”
He said the British doctors who had been deployed in Sierra Leone were working, but that they appeared to be more as observers and therefore “need to join our own doctors in hospitals to treat patients.”
He said the main problems besetting the country in dealing with the Ebola fight were its “inability to quarantine infected homes appropriately and insufficient doctors in treatment centres”.
The opposition man said the country lacked the required expertise to deal with Ebola which was why more doctors were contracting the disease.
In press statement issued on 2 December by the party, SLPP called on government to establish a post-Ebola fund that would strengthen the country’s health infrastructure and prepare it to address any reoccurrence of the disease. “The history of the virus has taught us that it will always reoccur in nations that it infects.” It argues for government to pay health workers on time, review the quantum of all payments and increase the number of contact tracers in the country because “they are a major part of the on-going fight in the frontlines to defeat this virus that has persisted in ravaging our communities.”
Tejan-Sie expressed disappointment saying that although President Koroma had restructured the national body coordinating the fight against Ebola while promising to eradicate the disease after that, “the numbers of new Ebola cases and deaths are still increasing”.
The release said “the failure of the nation to meet World Health Organisation’s target to treat 70% of Ebola patients and bury 70% of its victims safely by 1 December, 2014 only reinforces the precarious position our nation still finds itself.”
The party therefore implored government to “immediately quarantine homes of victims of the virus,” and provide consistent security network in the homes and deliver “quality and sufficient food to the quarantined homes for the 21 days”.
Meanwhile a government spokesman, Abdulai Bayraytay said the British doctors were in treatment centres and treating patients, playing laboratory roles and giving epidemiological advice.
“I wonder whether the SLPP knew that the doctors at Connaught Hospital, from the onset of the Ebola outbreak, are from Kings College in Britain,” he said, and referred to William Pooley, a British nurse who had returned to the country after contracting the disease in Kenema.
Bayraytay apportioned blames of failure by government to meet the 70% target against 1 December on the attitudes of people who “are still denying the existence of Ebola, burying people who had died of the disease”.
He said whether or not Britain gave all Sierra Leone needed, “as long as we don’t break the chain of transmission we will not win the fight against Ebola” before adding that it was unnecessary to blame anybody now.
© Politico 04
