By Kemo Cham
Amidst growing public concern over the state of preparedness of Sierra Leone for any spillover of the ongoing Coronavirus epidemic in China, the Ministry of Health has insisted that there is no cause for alarm at the moment.
An official told Politico that while the public concern was understandable, the government couldn’t do any more than it is doing at the moment given the prevailing circumstance.
The Coronavirus outbreak which began in China has since become an epidemic of global concern, with the World Health Organization (WHO) warning countries to prepare for an imminent spill over.
According to the global health body, cases have been reported in 49 countries outside China, with over 80, 000 cases and nearly 3, 000 fatalities, as of Friday February 28, since the epidemic erupted late last year.
From the onset of the epidemic, concern have been widespread, especially in poor countries like Sierra Leone, about the possibility of a spillover and their apparent lack of capacity to respond.
But the concern was heightened in Sierra Leone by reports of West Africa’s first confirmed case in Nigeria.
Focus has been at Sierra Leone’s border entry points, particularly the Lungi International Airport, which is the main point of entry into the country by passengers traveling by air.
Many Sierra Leoneans have been expressing their concern via social media. While some based their fears on their experience of the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic, others based theirs on personal experiences with the ongoing epidemic.
Yembeh Marah, a Sierra Leonean who recently traveled out and back into the country, wasn’t happy with what he saw at the Lungi Airport.
“The screenings I saw at the Airport are not good to talk about and we definitely shouldn't rely on that. We must act fast as a nation in the interest of everyone,” Marah wrote in a facebook post on Friday, two weeks after he flew in from Paris, France.
With the rapidity with which the virus has been spreading across the world, there has been a growing feeling that it is a matter of when, rather than whether, many countries especially in Africa, with ties to China, will record cases. And because of this many Sierra Leoneans have been asking about the capacity of the country in terms of laboratory and case management in the event there is a case.
According to the Ministry of Health, as of the end of last week, there were 22 people in quarantine after they traveled to Freetown from China.
Harold Thomas, Communications Lead at the Directorate of Health Security in the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS), told Politico that there was no need for anxiety as the ministry had put all modalities in place not just to ensure someone with the virus doesn’t get into the population, but that in the event that happens, to rapidly identify and isolate them and prevent a spread.
The Sierra Leone government instituted screening measures at its border entry points in January, shortly after the WHO declared the Coronavirus outbreak an international emergency.
And in early February the Ministry of Health announced that all travelers from mainland China, the epicenter of the epidemic, would be subjected to a compulsory 14-day quarantine.
Thomas said since then a cumulative total of 82 people of various nationalities, but mainly Sierra Leoneans and Chinese, have been subjected to quarantine.
He added that since then a lot of development have also occurred in terms of the country’s preparedness to prevent and respond to any spillover.
“We have escalated the EOC (Emergency Operations Center) to Level II; that is the second highest level we can go. We cannot go to Level III because there is no case in Sierra Leone,” he said.
Thomas noted that in addition to boosting the in-country capacity in terms of laboratory preparedness for timely detection of the virus, messages have also been developed and were being disseminated to the public as a way of sensitization on how to prevent, detect and report any suspected case to the relevant health authorities. There are also ongoing community and media engagement on the subject, he said.
“The virus can only come into Sierra Leone if there is an importation, and what Nigeria has done is what any responsible country should be doing,” he stated, while praising the move by the Nigerian government to make public its detected case.
“If they were not vigilant the case would have gone into the community,” Thomas added, noting that Sierra Leone too was working hard to prevent a spillover in the event there is a case.
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