By Mustapha Kamara Jnr.
Just days before schools are re-opened, the head of the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC), Retired Major Alfred Palo Conteh, has said schools in communities that were still recording new confirmed Ebola cases would not be allowed to re-open.
Conteh was speaking at the NERC usual Wednesday meeting with journalists at the Special Court premises on Jomo Kenyatta Road in Freetown. He said the center would advise government not to re-open schools in chiefdoms or villages that were still recording cases or have high transmission of the virus. They would recommend that only schools in other parts of the country be opened.
At the moment, Conteh said, NERC was working with UNICEF to identify schools that were used as holding centers to verify if they had been properly decontaminated and to know if school authorities have received Ebola protection materials. They would also check whether teachers were been trained in preparation for the reopening.
As a member of the Presidential Task Force on Ebola and a member of a committee that was set up for the re-opening of schools, Conteh said he could confirm that schools were sure to re-open on the stipulated date, Tuesday 14th April. That date was set up by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in consultation with the school re-opening committee, NERC and the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.
“NERC had initially advised government to postpone the re-opening of schools not only because there were spike in new confirmed cases but to also let the Ministry of Health, Water and Sanitation and the Ministry of Education” make enough preparations, he said.
He added that NERC and other international health partners had warned government against re-opening on the initial scheduled date because there were spike in new confirmed cases in March.
“Parents should feel reassured to send their children to schools because when you look back just seven weeks ago the country was registering 96 Ebola cases a week, but now the numbers are dwindling and who knows by the time we reopen schools the country would be recording few or no cases,” he said.
Speaking on the situation of the Ebola virus in the country, the NERC boss said the centre was now happy because seven districts were now into their 42nd day without recording any new case. He cited Kono and Tonkolili as the new districts to have gone 42 days consecutively without registering any new case.
Conteh hoped that Moyamba and Koinadugu,which have also completed the first 21-day cycle, would be able to complete their second cycle.
“Last week also, we all became worried when we heard of the positive case from Kailahun district, a district that was once an epicentre of this outbreak… We were jittery because Kailahun has been a good example of what every district should be in this fight as far as stopping and preventing transmission in our districts is concerned,” he said.
To address the situation in Kailahun, he went on, the NERC management strategy team had immediately constituted a rapid response team to embark on an investigation into the matter. Conteh said the team found no evidence of the EVD transmission in the district.
Meanwhile, he said reports for five days had shown transmission of the EVD was more focused now in the Western Area Urban and in the Kambia district. The NERC boss said the medical team and its partners would continue to zero in on those two areas and would also increase intervention in order to stop transmission and eradicate the deadly virus in the country.
© Politico 10/04/15
