By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Over ten suspected Ebola cases at the Koidu Government Hospital holding centre in Kono have been spotted outside their encampment areas on Sunday in search of food and water.
The scene turned chaotic while people ran away from the patients but the police showed up and encouraged them to go back to the centre with the support of health workers.
Some of them told Politico that they had left the isolation centre and had gone to the streets of Koidu in search of food and water “because the District Health Management Team (DHMT) has failed to so”.
The news of their being on the streets brought panic among residents around the holding centre and the hospital premises on Koroma Street, Hospital Road, Konospark and Pimbi Lane.
Mariama Lebbie, a mother of three at Pimbi Lane, said she was worried and had asked her children to get into their rooms to avoid coming in tact with possible Ebola cases. She appealed to authorities responsible to work against the repeat of such “an ugly incident that will threaten our security.”
Kono district had as of Sunday 5 October, registered 25 Ebola positive cases and all of them coming from the epicenters across the country. The recent development, of short in food supply for Ebola suspected cases at isolation centres, came amidst persistent complaints from quarantined homes in the district claiming that they were not being fed by the Ebola district taskforce.
One of the suspected Ebola cases, who refused to give her name, said they were in a very difficult situation at the centre without food, water and medication.
She said if the authority could not feed them “we will go out in search of food on our own”, adding that food supplied to them was not adequate and had not been supplied on time.
District Medical Officer at the government hospital in Koidu, Dr. Manso Dumbuya, confirmed to Politico that “it was a serious risk to the community for suspected Ebola cases to leave the isolation centre on to streets”.
He said the actions of the Ebola suspected cases were “legitimate, though risky,” adding that it was the body charged with the responsibility to supply food to the centre that went on strike.
Although he could not explain the reasons for the industrial action by staff of their suppliers, the DMO said that the issue of Ebola suspected cases leaving isolation centres in search of food was not something new, noting that it was common across the country.
Dr. Dumbuya assured that such incident would not repeat itself as they had identified where the problem was and had rectified it.
(C) Politico 07/10/14
