By Evelyn T. Kpadeh
MONROVIA, Liberia
Liberia’s health authority plans to work closely with neighboring Sierra Leone to help the country rid itself of the deadly Ebola virus.
The head of Liberia’s Ebola Incident Management System, Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, told Anadolu Agency that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – upon her return from a Manor River Union Meeting – had instructed health officials to extend all necessary assistance to Ebola-hit Sierra Leone.
“We [Liberia] are free from [Ebola], but we are not totally free until Sierra Leone and Guinea are free,” Minister Nyenswah said.
Speaking from Monrovia, he told Anadolu Agency that he had already concluded an assessment tour in Sierra Leone, adding that key decisions were being taken to ensure that, just as Liberia managed to eradicate Ebola, the same was now being done in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Liberia has sent a laboratory facility to Sierra Leone's Kenema region, where there have been no new Ebola cases reported in recent weeks due to what officials there describe as the speedy testing of suspected patients.
According to Liberian health officials, this was one of the many tools that allowed the country to successfully eradicate the virus. Personal protective equipment, drugs and other supplies have also been dispatched to Sierra Leone, Nyenswah pointed out.
He said that a UN Ebola emergency response team was on standby, ready for periodic deployment to Sierra Leone.
“There is still active transmission of the Ebola virus disease going on in Sierra Leone and Guinea,” Nyenswah said. “When I met with the head of the National Ebola Response [team] in Sierra Leone, I was able to drill them and give them some technical advice on how we managed here [in Liberia] to get to zero [new cases].”
According to Nyenswah, based on his discussions with the heads of Sierra Leone’s Ebola response team, the country is willing to work with Liberian health authorities to ensure that the virus is eradicated.
“Disease has no borders, so we have to continue to support our colleagues,” he said.
In March 2014, a man traveling from Guinea to Liberia inadvertently triggered the Ebola outbreak in the latter country.
Since then, Ebola has killed more than 5,000 people in Liberia alone, making orphans of 4,359 children, according to the country's Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.
