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EXCLUSIVE - Monrovia's W. Point celebrates lifting of Ebola quarantine

Happy as they were, residents insisted the quarantine had been unnecessary to begin with

02.09.2014 - Update : 02.09.2014
EXCLUSIVE - Monrovia's W. Point celebrates lifting of Ebola quarantine

By Evelyn T. Kpadeh

MONROVIA

Residents of Monrovia's densely-populated West Point township are celebrating the lifting of a days-long quarantine, initially enforced due to fears of Ebola, saying the government was wrong to have imposed it in the first place.

Local residents were smiling and dancing in jubilation when an Anadolu Agency reporter visited the community.

The barbed wire and security personnel that had surrounded the community's entry points for nearly two weeks were nowhere to be seen.

"We are happy that the road is now open," Thomas Tweh, who coordinates the distribution of food assistance to the community, told AA.

"We can now go about our normal things; at first, we were like prisoners," he said.

The government lifted the quarantine on Saturday in an effort to ease mounting tensions in the community.

The decision was taken based on a recommendation from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the country's highest decision-making body on health issues.

Assistant Health Minister for Preventive Services Tolbert Nyenswah told AA at the time that the decision had also been based on the cooperation they had seen by local residents.

Earlier this month, West Point residents woke up to find their township barricaded with barbed wire and surrounded by security forces.

The move came within the context of government efforts to contain an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the West African country.

But the restrictions on movement prompted clashes between security forces and local residents, which at one point left a 16-year-old boy and two people injured.  

In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has claimed 1,552 lives in West Africa. Most of the fatalities have been reported in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Six Ebola deaths have also been confirmed in Nigeria.

The deadly tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.

It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.

-Wronged-

After the quarantine was lifted, businesses in West Point opened their doors, while the women who eke out a living from petty trade could be seen back on the streets.

"I'm dancing because I can now take my goods in the morning to the market to sell and feed my children," said a jubilant Mary Togbah.

She told AA that the fact that she was back on the street selling pepper – enabling her to feed her children and grandchildren – was enough reason for dancing.

Happy as they were, however, residents insisted the quarantine had been unnecessary to begin with.

Many accused the government of failing to provide information on the number of Ebola cases registered in the community since it was quarantined two weeks ago.

"The proof the government has that we have Ebola patients here has not come," said Tweh.

Nyenswah, for his part, the senior health ministry official, told AA that the community had done "extremely well" in helping health teams track down suspected cases.

Test results from those cases, he said, would be made available as soon as possible.  

Tweh, meanwhile, wants the government to do just that.

"Let them give us statistics [on local Ebola infections] – or else the government should apologize to us, the people of West Point," he insisted.

Jacob Johnson, another West Point resident, was overjoyed that the community had been reopened. But he, too, said the government decision to quarantine the community had been wrong from the outset.

"The quarantine was a pain to us; it was not necessary at all," he told AA.

A father of two, Johnson said things had been extremely difficult for them during the quarantine period, when the price of a 25km bag of rice had climbed as high as 2,000 Liberian dollars (roughly $24) – this in a country where almost 70 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.

Had the government extended the quarantine to 60 days, he argued, there would have been no reported Ebola deaths – which the government had cited earlier as the reason for the quarantine.

"We all believe that Ebola is real; we are all fighting this deadly disease," he said. "Even before the passing of 21 days [the time needed to confirm an Ebola infection] the government opened the community."

Meanwhile, the World Food Program (WFP) has continued to distribute food to the community following the lifting of the quarantine.

Trucks brimming with rice, beans and oil could be seen entering the community to distribute supplies to local families.

Targeting nearly 75,000 people in the West Point Township, the WFP is expected to keep up its food deliveries until next week.

Tweh, who is helping coordinate food distribution, said the WFP had stepped in following the Liberian government's failure to feed the community.

"This government did not prepare for this quarantine and was unable to continue it," he added.

www.aa.com.tr/en

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