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Conakry – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone announced an isolation zone sealing off the epicentre of the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, where the three countries meet.“We have agreed to take important and extraordinary actions at the inter-country level to focus on cross-border regions that have more than 70 percent of the epidemic,” said Hadja Saran Darab, the secretary-general of the Mano River Union bloc grouping the West African nations.
“These areas will be isolated by police and military. The people in these areas being isolated will be provided with material support.”
The announcement came at the end of an emergency summit, also attended by Ivory Coast and the World Health Organisation, to launch a $100m response to an epidemic which has killed more 700 people.
“The healthcare services in these zones will be strengthened for treatment, testing and contact tracing to be done effectively. Burials will be done in accordance with national health regulations. We agreed to provide our health personnel with incentives, treatment and protection so they could come back to work.”
Darab did not outline the exact area to be part of the isolation zone, but the epicentre of the outbreak spreads from Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone to Macenta in southern Guinea, almost 300km away.
Meanwhile, the body of man who died in Liberia has been quarantined by authorities in south-east Nigeria as a precaution amid growing concern over Ebola, an official said on Friday.
The man’s relatives repatriated his remains over the weekend for burial in the Oyi area of Anambra state.
There was no immediate evidence that Ebola caused his death, but panic broke out in Oyi when locals learned that he had died in Liberia, one of three countries ravaged by the deadliest known outbreak of the virus, an Anambra government spokesperson Emeka Ozumba, said.
“The government decided to keep the corpse away from relations and the public until we are sure of the cause of death since the body was flown in from Liberia,” Ozumba said.
The length of the man’s stay in Liberia or the precise day he died were not immediately known.
“The step is precautionary,” Ozumba said, adding that tests would be run on the body before it would be released. Scores of people are thought to have contracted Ebola while burying relatives who died of the virus. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has said the outbreak in her country, where 156 people have died, was “nearing a catastrophe”.
The only confirmed Ebola death in Nigeria was that of Liberian government official Patrick Sawyer, who contracted the virus from his sister before travelling to Lagos on 20 July.
He was visibly sick upon arrival at the airport, placed under quarantine and died on July 25.
Global concern has soared in recent days over the outbreak which has infected more than 1,300 people and killed 729 since the start of the year, in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with one death recorded in Nigeria. — AFP
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