UN Ebola pointman to visit west Africa
22 Aug 2014 5:50 AM IST
The UN’s new pointman on Ebola was due to arrive in west Africa on Thursday for a visit aimed at shoring up health services in the region where at least 1,350 lives have been lost to the virus.
David Nabarro, a British physician appointed last week by UN secretary Ban Ki-moon, said he would focus on ‘revitalising the health sectors’ in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
‘One of the major issues is that health sectors and health services in countries affected by Ebola have really suffered,’ Nabarro told reporters in New York ahead of his trip.
Nabarro will travel to Monrovia, Freetown, Conakry and Abuja as part of his overall mission to coordinate the global response to the worst-ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever.
His visit comes at a time when affected countries are scrambling to contain the spread of the killer disease.
Guinea, where the outbreak first appeared earlier this year, sent more than 100 doctors and volunteers to its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia on Thursday to monitor people entering the country for signs of Ebola.
The move is part of a plan introduced under Guinea’s state of emergency, which was declared earlier this month in an effort to stop the spread of the virus that has killed 396 people in the country to date.
‘It is necessary that everyone living outside our borders who wishes to enter our country be examined with the utmost rigour,’ said health minister Colonel Remy Lamah.
The measures in Guinea followed a chaotic day in Liberia’s capital, where violence erupted in an Ebola quarantine zone as soldiers opened fire and used tear gas on protesting crowds.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had ordered a nightime curfew and the quarantine of Monrovia’s West Point slum and Dolo Town, to the east of the capital, in a bid to stem the outbreak.
Residents of West Point, where club-wielding youths stormed an Ebola medical facility on Saturday, reacted with fury to the crackdown, hurling stones and shouting at the security forces.
David Nabarro, a British physician appointed last week by UN secretary Ban Ki-moon, said he would focus on ‘revitalising the health sectors’ in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
‘One of the major issues is that health sectors and health services in countries affected by Ebola have really suffered,’ Nabarro told reporters in New York ahead of his trip.
Nabarro will travel to Monrovia, Freetown, Conakry and Abuja as part of his overall mission to coordinate the global response to the worst-ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever.
His visit comes at a time when affected countries are scrambling to contain the spread of the killer disease.
Guinea, where the outbreak first appeared earlier this year, sent more than 100 doctors and volunteers to its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia on Thursday to monitor people entering the country for signs of Ebola.
The move is part of a plan introduced under Guinea’s state of emergency, which was declared earlier this month in an effort to stop the spread of the virus that has killed 396 people in the country to date.
‘It is necessary that everyone living outside our borders who wishes to enter our country be examined with the utmost rigour,’ said health minister Colonel Remy Lamah.
The measures in Guinea followed a chaotic day in Liberia’s capital, where violence erupted in an Ebola quarantine zone as soldiers opened fire and used tear gas on protesting crowds.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had ordered a nightime curfew and the quarantine of Monrovia’s West Point slum and Dolo Town, to the east of the capital, in a bid to stem the outbreak.
Residents of West Point, where club-wielding youths stormed an Ebola medical facility on Saturday, reacted with fury to the crackdown, hurling stones and shouting at the security forces.
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