As the fight against the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) across West Africa continues, a Republican Senator representing Arizona in the United States, John Sidney McCain, yesterday urged President Barrack Obama to use the nation’s resources to help African countries tackle the disease.
This is coming as Senegal became the fifth country to be hit by the world’s worst Ebola outbreak at the weekend, while riots broke out in neighbouring Guinea’s remote southeast where infection rates are rising fast.
In the latest sign that the outbreak of the virus, which has already killed at least 1,550 people, is spinning out of control, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Ebola cases rose last week at the fastest pace since the epidemic began in West Africa in March.
In an interview on the US-based Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), McCain noted that the US government has not done enough to assist the affected Ebola countries in West Africa.
He said, “The U.S should do more, including possibly dispatching military assets to combat the Ebola outbreak roiling at least five African nations. All of us will like to see the United States more involved.
“We have U.S. Navy hospital ships that can move from one place to another. So, we should marshal up all the assets that we have to do what we can. If there is a way where we can provide additional medical help, I think all the world would support it.”
The epidemic has defied efforts by governments to control it, prompting the leading charity fighting the outbreak, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), to call for the U.N. Security Council to take charge of efforts to stop it.
Including the fatalities, more than 3,000 have been infected since the virus was detected in the remote jungles of Southeastern Guinea in March and quickly spread across the border to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It has also touched Nigeria, where six people have died.
Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma dismissed his Health Minister Miatta Kargbo on Friday over her handling of the epidemic, which has killed more than 400 people in the country.
Scientists at the weekend also reported that ZMapp, the drug that recently cured two American aid workers who contracted the disease in Liberia, had cured all 18 lab monkeys infected with the virus in laboratory tests.
Senegalese Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck said a man turned up for treatment at a hospital in the capital Dakar on Tuesday, concealing the fact that he had had close contact with victims in his home country.
“We are tracing his whole itinerary and also identifying anyone who had contact with the patient, who has been diagnosed and is much more cooperative and supplied all the necessary information,” the minister said.
A Health Ministry official, who asked not to be named, said the 21-year-old crossed into Senegal via its southern border with Guinea and had been living in the densely populated Dakar suburb of Parcelles Assainies for weeks. He added that the man appeared to have a good chance of recovering.
The man had been under surveillance by health authorities in Guinea because of his contact with Ebola victims but escaped to Senegal, Seck said.
Residents in Dakar reacted with anger and concern. “When you are sick, why do you leave your own country to export the disease to another?” asked radio host Taib Soce on RFM, a popular station owned by Senegalese music star Youssou N’dour.
In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, Senegal last week banned flights to and from three of the affected countries and shut its land border with Guinea.
The country, a regional hub for U.N. agencies and aid groups, has also refused to give clearance for U.N. aid flights to Ebola-hit countries in a move that humanitarian workers say is hampering their ability to respond to the epidemic.
The director of the United States Centre for Disease Control (CDC) warned on weekend of a “catastrophe” if emergency actions were not taken immediately to reverse the trend of rising cases.
In the remote southeastern Guinean city of Nzerekore, riots broke out last week over rumours that health workers had infected people with Ebola, a Red Cross official and residents said.
The government of Guinea said it has the epidemic under control, but the number of cases has flared up in southern Guinea, a trend the government blames on people spilling over the borders from Liberia and Sierra Leone.
A crowd of young men, some armed with clubs and knives, set up barricades across Nzerekore and threatened to attack the hospital before security forces moved in to restore order. Gunshots were fired and several people were injured, said Youssouf Traore, president of the Guinean Red Cross.
“A rumour, which was totally false, spread that we had sprayed the market in order to transmit the virus to locals,” Traore said. “People revolted and resorted to violence, prompting soldiers to intervene.”
Local Red Cross workers had to flee to the military camp with their medical equipment. Another resident said the security forces were preventing people leaving their neighborhoods overnight. More than 400 people have died in Guinea, though the infection rate is slower than in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Source: Daily Newswatch
