By Umaru Fofana
It is Sunday afternoon at the ever-pristine Lumley beach. Cars are parked. Revellers already frolicking. Girls in miniskirts panting and perambulating. All at their peril and at the peril of the broader society.
Welcome to Lumley beach. It seems back on its own shores after months of being on its own seabed in the doldrums due to Ebola. No one seems to care to wade in on those who are clearly violating the country’s Ebola emergency measures. If what they were doing posed a political threat all the country’s security forces would have been unleashed on them. Our leaders are more concerned with political power than the welfare of the state. How sad!
This premature loosening of the tightening grips will only make us lose the fight against a virus that is as stubborn as it is debilitating. So far we have it on its back foot. But it is all hasty celebrations and reckless letting-down of the guard. It is perhaps also ill-advised for the president to have removed travel restrictions at this time. He could have relaxed trading and kept travel restrictions to hitherto quarantined districts.
Ebola is only in the doorway on its way out, being pushed. Not yet out having been crushed. Thanks to all the health workers and the world community for their help. But we should also thank our stars that the virus seems to be running its full course and is petering out. But it is still around us, still infecting us, still killing us. It can re-emerge with more venom, possibly mutate and pillage yet again.
Behind a blue twine at Simma Town in the Freetown outskirts sits a 15-year-old boy. Sheku has lost his mother and his younger sister. That is as far as he knows. What he does not know, according to aid workers, is that his father and his elder sister too are dead. As far as he is concerned or knows, the dad is on a business trip to Kono and the sister is recovering at an Ebola treatment centre. “She is doing fine, I even sent some of my food supplies for her yesterday” he says.
Sheku is alone in a quarantined house. A few metres away sit and stand police officers and soldiers, guarding and keeping wake to ensure he, and dozens of others in the neighbourhood stay in quarantine until the mandatory 21-day incubation period elapses. He has clocked one week. Others have been behind the ropes for anywhere between 10 days and two weeks.
In one of the quarantined homes someone – it is feared – has started to show signs and symptoms of Ebola. If that fear comes true, it will mean a restart of the 21-day count in one of the overcrowded compounds, and more seriously more new cases will be added to an already massive number of around 10,000 infected cases.
Simah Town has already had more than its fair share. It all started after Isha Thullah had been discharged – perhaps falsely or after she had been infected at the Macauley Street holding centre while awaiting her Ebola test result. Whatever the truth she had been taken to the hospital fearing she had the virus. She was discharged in the belief she hadn’t Ebola, setting off a long chain of infections and deaths that have so far in this month of January left over 30 killed. In part the virus spread because, like most of the country, sanitation in the area is a luxury. There is only one toilet for the dozens of people in a massive condominium of shoddy structures. Some of the tiny rooms have an unbelievable number of people living in them.
Here there are children galore who have been orphaned by Ebola. Two of them have survived and have been discharged – but only just. One looked like she would collapse and die any time soon. She is unhealthy and without food to build back her system. Even she fears for her life.
And the general fear is that many more could get infected, and die, of Ebola here amid the new found optimism that’s left un-tempered. The new infection figures are pretty encouraging, judging by whence we have come. But with a virus like Ebola, even one new infection is one infection too many and could set off a massive onslaught.
The public information units of the National Ebola Response Centre, the ministry of health, the United Nations Ebola Mission and the Un World Health organisation must step up their campaign to ward people off being hyper optimistic and letting down their guard. Ending Ebola is not an event – it is a process. It does not end as the way it came – at a go. It requires sustained care and prevention mechanisms. It requires a sustained encouragement of the health care workers, which is why I feel it was premature that the president spoke about ending hazard payment to health workers.
I know the payment of health hazard has been messy and perhaps stinking corrupt. I also know it is massively expensive. But you can argue the same for quarantining of homes. The solution is to unclog the system and not to discontinue it.
The MSF-run Kailahun Ebola treatment centre has been without a single case for almost two months but the French charity has kept it open with its health workers on pay regardless. And they say they will keep them in station for three months more – until there is not a single new case.
What I think the authorities should consider with this is to discuss with the stakeholders in the health sector and discuss a drawdown and not force it down their throat. Such a discussion can consider a proposal of halving, for example, the hazard payment amid a strict adherence to the principles of transparency and accountability.
The same mistake the government made in dabbling with the Ebola fight without having engaged the professional health unions/associations is the same mistake it is doing by disengaging them without first engaging with them. It is ill-advised.
Many more cars will be parked on Lumley beach Tie up with the Sunday afternoon beach, many more revellers will be frolicking and many more semi-naked girls will be panting and perambulating in and around the area and help reawaken the apparently sleeping-but-still-alive Ebola. All at the peril of all of us. Who said we have learned any lessons from the Ebola outbreak? The same way our leaders were left stupid by the end of the war and cholera, is the same way we will be left foolish in dealing by the ebbing of Ebola.
Next week, I will bring you state neglect as I saw it at Mabela, Susan’s Bay and Magazine Wharf.
© Politico 29/01/15
