By Joseph Lamin Kamara
A Guinean court has sentenced to life in prison 11 people for murdering people who were educating villagers about dangers of contracting Ebola, State Prosecutor William Fernandez is reported to have said on Wednesday.
Fernandez had requested death penalty for the culprits.
Although in Sierra Leone there has been no report yet that an Ebola worker has been murdered, there have been several reports of noncompliance with regulations aimed at curbing the disease. There have even been reports of violence in some remote communities.
In the two nationwide lockdowns the country has had, Ebola workers found many dead bodies in houses which proved that those who died had been haboured, despite warning against the act. Prior to the first lockdown in September last year, the then minister of Health announced a two-year jail term for anyone caught hiding an Ebola infected person. During the lockdown hundreds of sick people and dead bodies were found, and many of the sick turned out to be Ebola positive. Similar things happened in the second lockdown. In both instances, no one was jailed.
That approach has not only proved lax but deceptive, and that has obviously helped prolong the fight against the disease.
Strange reaction
When it first broke out early last year in West Africa, Ebola was new to most people and people reacted to the outbreak strangely. Many then did not believe the messages authorities preached and while many have struggled to abide by medical advice which prevent transmission of the disease, others have overly denied existence of the disease. It is with that disbelief that they have acted in defiance. Therefore, people have continued to care for their sick and bury their dead relatives as traditional to them. For some people it is the fear of stigmatization that has made them particularly hide sick relatives.
Those attitudes, according to experts, have particularly worsened the fight against the deadly virus. Last August in Liberia, an angry crowd of community members attacked an Ebola treatment centre in the densely populated West Point community in Monrovia and looted the facility. Reports stated that many community people shouted there was no Ebola and were particularly annoyed because an Ebola treatment centre had been created in their community. And some of them took away their sick relatives who were being treated for Ebola.
Similar incidents were reported in Sierra Leone. At Lakka on the outskirts of the Sierra Leone capital Freetown community members, reportedly, initially opposed the construction of a treatment centre last year. And people have attacked treatment centres and taken away their sick relatives.
In Guinea, widespread disbelief and misinformation led to villagers chasing away health workers with machetes and stones. The bodies of eight people were found in a village near the city of Nzerekore in September last year. Among those murdered were medical personnel and journalists.
The sentencing of the culprits on Wednesday may serve as serious warning to other people whose disbelief in the existence of Ebola has made them attack even aid workers like Red Cross members.
Negligence
Ebola has killed more than 10, 000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and has badly wrecked their economies. For a disease like that and with such behaviour of people, these countries need consistent vigilance to curb it. But the apparent lax and negligent manner authorities in particularly Sierra Leone and Guinea have handled the fight with has to be blamed for the long stay of the disease.
In both the lockdowns Sierra Leone has had, people had been made to believe that volunteers would go into houses and fetch sick people out to test them for Ebola. That was not the case, even in the last lockdown.
One volunteer who went as part of a team in central Freetown in the last lockdown remarked that they had been sent to search for sick people, but said they would not do that because they believed people would not hide sick relatives.
Although some magistrates have sent to prison some people who have violated the Public Health Emergency Act, 2014, the fight against Ebola has been a tough one. Therefore, it requires tough measures against it. That should have been the main reason President Ernest Bai Koroma appointed his erstwhile defence minister as the head of the national Ebola response team. But it appears the disease has remained in the country mainly because of defiance from community people.
“We have all heard of the recent EVD outbreak in Moa Wharf, where a few members of the community decided to do all the things we have been preaching to communities not to do. All of our confirmed cases for the Western Area, from last week to date, are all from Moa Wharf. This is happening because someone fell ill and the community decided to care for the person instead of calling 117,” Palo Conteh, the chief executive officer of the National Ebola Response Centre, said Wednesday.
Just last week in Samu Chiefdom in the northern district of Kambia, community people attacked Ebola workers leaving a soldier disarmed and wounded. According to reports, the community members said they did not want their relatives taken away from quarantine to a treatment centre even though they were manifesting signs of Ebola. Some arrests were made by the police, but according to Samu paramount chief, Shebora Yek, the violators have been released.
“Even teeth and tongue can quarrel sometimes, but they will settle,” the paramount chief told Politico on a phone conversation on Wednesday.
In Guinea, reports have indicated that some of those killed had had their throats chopped and some had been hacked to death and their bodies thrown into latrines.
In Sierra Leone, even political leaders have undermined genuine efforts to eradicate the disease. There have been reports of the All People’s Congress (APC) party supporters in huge crowds demonstrating supports for even President Koroma in Freetown, despite emergency measures prohibiting public gathering. And members of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) recently demonstrated before the US embassy. Whatever these two parties are truly up to, the fight against a virus like Ebola does not need diversion of attention of the central government from eradicating it to a constitutional crisis like what the country has now. The appointed vice president Victor Bockarie Foh is moving around the country with crowds.
On Tuesday, Politico published a story about the Pujehun Council Chairman who had announced that youth resume playing football in Zimmi Town the Pujehun District headquarter town, a move the police and other local authorities are opposing.
Although the disease is being eradicated, with Guinea 63% fatality rate and Liberia 43% and Sierra Leone 30%, if the Sierra Leonean authorities have handled the Ebola fight with the required vigilance and seriousness, the country could have long eradicated the disease. If a jail term has been handed down on community people like those of Samu Chiefdom and Moa Wharf long before, and if there had not been a constitutional crisis, Ebola should have been eradicated by now.
© Politico 23/04/15
