An Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone. Yahoo/AFP
Sierra Leone, in a last ditch effort to defeat Ebola, will confine 2.5 million people to their homes for three days. Yahoo/AFP. The lockdown will start on March 27th and will end on the 29th. With 3,700 of the 10,200 deaths from Ebola, Sierra Leone has been especially hard hit by the disease. While the country is locked down, teams will search houses for Ebola patients in the capitol of Freetown and the northern districts of Bombali and Port Loko. The teams will also stress the importance of safe burials as unsafe burials are a major way for the disease to spread. The three districts are where the majority of new cases are being found in Sierra Leone. The country has set a deadline of April 15th for the eradication of the disease. Sierra Leone has seen fewer cases lately, with only 55 cases reported last week, the best number since June of last year. The news is not nearly as good in Guinea, where they reported 95 new cases, the most since the new year.
My Comment:
Let's hope this lockdown works. The Ebola outbreak needed to be defeated months ago, but it still lingers on. What is happening in Sierra Leone is encouraging. As amazing as it is that people are still failing to practice safe burial practices, it is apparently still happening. This lockdown should help with that and if nothing else it will allow officials to determine how bad the problem still is. And maybe, just maybe they will stop the virus in its track. That's the hope at least.
And it isn't like there isn't a precedent for success here. Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, The United States, and The United Kingdom were able to defeat Ebola. Liberia is on the way to defeating Ebola as well. As far as I can tell there haven't been any new cases there for some time. They haven't made it to the 42 day mark yet, but it seems like they have a very good chance of doing so. If Ebola can be defeated there, where Ebola looked apocalyptic just a few months ago, it can be defeated in Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Speaking of Guinea, it seems they are having some problems. The fact that the number of cases there are increasing dramatically wasn't really covered in the article, but the rate of increase is disturbing. I'm not sure what their problem is there but I am guessing it is a combination of two factors. First they are having the same problems with unsafe burials as everyone else has. Second, they haven't gotten as much support fighting the disease as Liberia and Sierra Leone have. I don't know how true that is, but it seems like it makes sense. Guinea has always been the forgotten front in the Ebola war, so it is possible. If they need help, they need to get it and fast. A huge spike in cases in Guinea could reverse all the gains in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
I haven't said much about the Ebola patient in America. Largely because that person was taken to a hospital that has isolation units and are trained to fight Ebola. I don't see another outbreak in the United States. The one we did have should have never have happened. Indeed, had the initial patient been taken to a hospital with a proper isolation ward when he was first treated, then nothing would have happened. Other then that incident, America has had fairly good record at treating Ebola and stopping any secondary infections. That should remain the case for the foreseeable future.
As a final note, I am looking forward to the day when Ebola is defeated. I've been following this story for more then a year now and I have been blogging about it since I started this blog. It's an important story that needed to be, and still needs to be, covered. But out of all the posts the only one I will enjoy writing is the one where I say "Ebola is gone!"
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