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Sierra Leone begins 3-day lockdown in bid to halt Ebola
Deserted neighborhood in Freetown during the 3-day national lockdown. PHOTO/Umaru Fofana/Reuters
Streets in the capital of Sierra Leone were deserted on Friday as the West African state began a contested, 3-day lockdown in a bid to halt the Ebola outbreak.
President Ernest Bai Koroma urged people to heed the emergency measures, and only vehicles driven by police and health workers took to the normally bustling roads of Freetown. “Today, the life of everyone is at stake, but we will get over this difficulty if all do what we have been asked to do,” said Koroma in a television address late on Thursday. “These are extraordinary times and extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.”
Nearly 30,000 health workers, volunteers and teachers aim to visit every household in the country of six million people by Sunday to educate them about the disease and isolate the sick.
Ebola has infected over 3,000 people in West Africa this year, mainly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia – in the most deadly epidemic of the virus since it was discovered in 1976.
In Sierra Leone, at least 562 people have died so far from the incurable disease.
Some have questioned, however, whether the campaign will be effective. Sierra Leone newspaper Awareness Times in an editorial called the preparations for the lockdown “chaotic” and recommended its postponement.
However, an official for the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, Roeland Monasch, said the “Ose to Ose” campaign, which means “house to house” in local Krio language, would be helpful.
“If people don’t have access to the right information, we need to bring life-saving messages to them, where they live, at their doorsteps,” he said.
Investors are worried about the consequences of the lockdown on Sierra Leone’s iron ore production. In a bid to reassure them, African Minerals Ltd. said it expected no material impact on its iron ore operations.
Source: Reuters