By Joseph Lamin Kamara
The National Ebola Response Centre (NERC), the national body coordinating the fight against Ebola, has expressed fear of having a wide resurgence of the disease in the country if the Public Health Emergency is lifted.
Rtd. Major Alfred Palo Conteh, NERC’s CEO, said on Wednesday at his weekly news conference in Freetown that the health emergency was still “good” in fighting the Ebola scourge in the country.
“The state of emergency was a good idea and continues to be a good idea,” Conteh said at the country’s military headquarters, Cockeril, where the NERC is hosted.
Conteh was responding to questions from the press about a further extension of the emergency rule which came into effect in August last year, after Parliament passed a resolution on President Ernest Bai Koroma’s declaration of the emergency on the last day of the previous month.
Experts say Ebola which has claimed more than 3000 lives in the country is spread through especially body contacts among humans, therefore the emergency rule came muzzling the movements of people as it prohibited public gathering.
But government has been criticized for allowing members of the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) party to engage in political activities while suppressing and detaining opposition members doing the same. The opposition, the media and national and international rights’ groups have therefore been calling for the lifting of the emergency rule since the country now has confined Ebola to only four of the country’s 14 districts.
The Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), the main opposition, has vowed to vote against any other motion seeking a further extension of the emergency, after the country has had two extensions already. The extension campaign which is led by President Koroma, already supported by his party and the United Democratic Movement (UDM), has sparked a hot debate on whether to lift or extend the emergency.
At the NERC’s Wednesday press conference, Politico asked whether Mr Alfred Palo Conteh supported a further extension or not.
“The Public Health Emergency is like any other emergency that is under constant review. You will hear from me. Watch the space,” he responded.
He later replied to another question on the same issue thus: “When [earlier this year] we advised the President to lift travel restrictions and there were new cases, a lot of people lambasted me.”
Earlier this year Ebola re-emerged in communities where the disease had been eliminated, after President Koroma relaxed the emergency measures.
The NERC boss had, earlier in his address, said that the Public Health Emergency measures had been introduced for the country to get “to zero and we are almost there.”
“Every part of the [Ebola Virus Disease] EVD response is regularly reviewed and the State of Emergency is no different,” he had said.
Conteh, who was the country’s defence minister before his appointment as NERC head, added that he was seeking advice from experts, but he urged the public to continue supporting the Ebola response “by adhering to the bye-laws until any changes are announced.”
Similarly, a communications officer at the country office of the World Health Organization, Ebba Kalondo, told Politico that in July this year the Emergency Committee at the global level stated that the Ebola outbreak was continuing to “constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.”
Kalondo said that the Emergency Committee therefore had advised that temporary recommendations issued earlier needed to be extended.
“The Committee emphasized that the goal is to get to zero transmission as quickly as possible,” she added, in an email to Politico on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the House of Parliament was scheduled to have tabled a motion on another extension of the Public Health Emergency on Tuesday, but it was apparent that the House was on an indefinite recess.
While the National Secretary General of SLPP, Suleiman Banja Tejan-Sie, told Politico on the same Tuesday that Parliament had withdrawn the motion and would not again sit on it, the Director of Public Relations of the House, Cyril Juxon-Smith, said the motion had not been tabled and Parliament would be recalled at any time.
There has however been a rumour on social media that parliament had a meeting on the same Tuesday about extending the State of Emergency for six months.
That is in contrast to what the SLPP had said it members of Parliament would do.
But the Office of the Clerk of Parliament issued a press statement on Wednesday damning that.
“We hasten to state that there was no such meeting and therefore no such decision taken about the current State of Emergency. Members of the public are assured that statutory deliberations and debates on the State of Emergency are intended to serve the best interests of the nation and as with any other matter, will be readily published as they occur,” states part of the statement signed by Juxon-Smith.
According to NERC, as of Wednesday, the 5th of July, the country had only two chains of transmission of Ebola, with two new confirmed cases in the northern district of Tonkolili and two suspected cases at the 34 Military Hospital in Freetown.
The two suspected cases at the military hospital have had two tests and proved negative, and are awaiting another last two, according to the NERC boss.
He said in his statement that there were another 92 high risk contacts and over 500 other people still in quarantine in Tonkolili.
“There will undoubtedly be more cases from these contacts and we are ready to diagnose them early and give them the best possible treatment available,” he added.
(C) Politico 06/08/15
