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Ebola Epidemic

African states seal off outbreak epicenter

Launch $100m emergency fund to battle crisis

AFP, Conakry
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone yesterday announced an isolation zone sealing off the epicentre of the world's worst-ever Ebola outbreak, where the three countries meet.
"We have agreed to take important and extraordinary actions at the intercountry level to focus on cross-border regions that have more than 70 percent of the epidemic," said Hadja Saran Darab, the secretary-general of the Mano River Union bloc grouping the West African nations.
"These areas will be isolated by police and military. The people in these areas being isolated will be provided with material support."
The announcement came at the end of an emergency summit, also attended by Ivory Coast and the World Health Organization, to launch a $100 million response to an epidemic which has killed more 700 people.
"The healthcare services in these zones will be strengthened for treatment, testing and contact tracing to be done effectively.
“Burials will be done in accordance with national health regulations. We agreed to provide our health personnel with incentives, treatment and protection so they could come back to work."
Darab did not outline the exact area to be part of the isolation zone, but the epicentre of the outbreak spreads from Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone to Macenta in southern Guinea, almost 300 kilometres away.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization warned west Africa's Ebola-hit nations yesterday that the epidemic was spiralling out of control and could spread to other countries, causing "catastrophic" loss of life and severe economic disruption.
WHO chief Margaret Chan told the leaders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia at the regional summit the
response to the epidemic had been "woefully inadequate", revealing that the outbreak was "moving faster than our efforts to control it”.
The plan will also bolster efforts to prevent and detect suspected cases, urge better border surveillance, and reinforce WHO's sub-regional outbreak coordination centre in Guinea.
"If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socio-economic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries," Chan said.
The meeting came after Dubai's Emirates became the first global airline to announce it was suspending flights to the stricken area while the United States, Germany and France issued warnings against travel to the three African countries.
Meanwhile Nigeria quarantined two people who had "primary contact" with a man who died of Ebola in Lagos last week as west Africa battled to tame the outbreak.
The WHO raised the death toll by 57 to 729 on Thursday, announcing that 122 new cases had been detected between Thursday and Sunday last week, bringingthe total to more than 1,300.
Sierra Leone's leader Ernest Bai Koroma has announced a state of emergency, quarantining Ebola-hit areas and cancelling foreign trips by ministers, while Liberia has closed all of its schools and put government workers on leave.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf warned ahead of the summit that the crisis was "nearing a catastrophe" and appealed for more doctors and supplies.
Ebola, which has no vaccine, causes severe muscular pains, fever, headaches and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding.
It has killed around two-thirds of those it has infected since its emergence in 1976, with two outbreaks registering case fatality rates approaching 90 percent. The death rate in the current outbreak is a lower-than-average 55 percent.
Fears that it could spread to other continents through air travel have been growing, with European and Asian countries on alert alongside African countries outside the Ebola crisis zone.
In Britain, Sierra Leone cyclist Moses Sesay was quarantined and tested for Ebola at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, before being given the all-clear, the athlete told a British newspaper.