By Mustapha Kamara and Crispina Cummings
Member of Parliament for Constituency 95 in the Western Rural District has said that the spread of the Ebola virus disease is increasing speedily “with over twenty deaths reported daily.”
Claude Kamanda told Politico yesterday that people were contracting and dying of Ebola in the district at a faster rate. He said the reason for the increase in trend of the spread was due to the influx of people coming in from neighboring districts like Port Loko.
Kamanda said okada or bike riders were also illegally traveling with persons infected with Ebola and other diseases in and out of the districts. “Although there are delays in processing test results, over sixty percent of the test reports prove that people die of the Ebola disease,” he stated, adding that the district was experiencing challenges in terms of collecting corpses from both quarantined and non-quarantined homes.
He said there was lack of holding centres in the district and that “until and unless we have holding centres the situation will not get better”.
However, Kamanda, who doubles as chairman of the Ebola response committee in the Western Rural district, said they would continue to work collectively with other partners to initiate new laws and strategies to stop the spread of the disease in the country.
He said the World Food Program, WFP, had provided food for quarantined homes but that was put on hold to ensure better and organised delivery of food items.
He urged community people to adhere to warnings issued by medical personnel, called on traditional healers to stop treating sick people and warned bike riders to stop transporting sick people in and out of the district to stop the spread of the virus.
(C) Politico 21/10/14
