By Kemo Cham
Exactly one year to the day the World Health Organisation first declared the end of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, the country will mark the occasion with a three-minute silence.
According to a statement from State House, at exactly 11:00 am on Monday 7 November, flags on all government buildings will fly at half mast.
All vehicles are expected to stop, and classes in schools and all other learning institutions will also grind to a halt lasting the moment of silence.
As ceremonies are held to mark today's anniversary, the government has still not paid the $ 5,000 promised each family who lost a health worker to the disease. The plight of Ebola orphans and survivors also persists.
The Ebola epidemic which began in neighbouring Guinea in December 2013 but was not confirmed until February 2014, spread to Liberia and later Sierra Leone.
There were sporadic cases in Nigeria, Mali and Senegal but they managed to contain theirs quickly. Cases also popped up in Spain, UK and the US.
A total of 11, 323 people were killed by the virus which infected 28, 646 people, according to WHO figures, most of them in the three neighbouring countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Sierra Leone was one of the hardest hit, accounting for almost half of the total number of cases (14, 124) with 3,956 deaths.
The epidemic was declared over for a second time on March 17 this year, after a cluster in Kambia reset the clock.
This commemoration is not just aimed at honouring those who lost their lives to the virus but also the unity demonstrated by the nation to confront it, the government says.
The three-minute silence will be immediately followed by a televised nationwide address by President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Copyright (c) Politico 2016
