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More ambulances, checkpoints and changes in behavior are keeping new Ebola cases in check, with hopes the govt could stamp out the virus by March.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
\n
\"Tombstones <\/a><\/figure>\n
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A military-style operation to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone has helped dramatically reduce new cases in what health officials say is a major step towards defeating the deadly disease.<\/p>\n

Since it was launched about a month ago, the operation has doubled the number of ambulances for patients in the densely populated west of Sierra Leone, the worst-affected country where more than 3\u00a0000 people have died.<\/p>\n

Police halt vehicles at checkpoints in the tumbledown streets to check temperatures, while posters proclaim in the local Krio language: \u201cTogeda we go stop ebola.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aid workers have reported success in changing behavior in rural areas, notably discouraging people from burial rituals involving direct contact with the dead, a major source of transmission.<\/p>\n

As a result, transmission of the hemorrhagic fever has slowed sharply in the West African country, which has recorded more than 10\u00a0000 cases since May. There were just 184 new cases in the week to January 11, the lowest in five months.<\/p>\n

More than half of the beds in treatment centers across Sierra Leone are empty in stark contrast to a peak in November when centers in Freetown overflowed, patients waited days for ambulances and bodies were left unburied or interred secretly in backyards.<\/p>\n

This has prompted President Ernest Bai Koroma to say he believes his government \u2013 helped by the nearly 800 British soldiers and more than $450-million in foreign aid \u2013 can stamp out Sierra Leone\u2019s last case by the end of March.<\/p>\n

Some health specialists and aid workers are more cautious.<\/p>\n

They hope the success in Freetown and its environs is a big step towards beating the epidemic, which has killed more than 8\u00a0400 people, now that Liberia and Guinea appear to have stabilized, but are wary of calling the end of an outbreak that last April seemed to wane in Guinea, only to return ferociously.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sierra Leone problem is turning the corner. I think we\u2019ll get close to zero there by March so long as there are no surprises,\u201d said Philippe Maughan, senior Ebola operations manager at Echo, the European Commission\u2019s humanitarian aid branch.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut … there will be cases popping up here and there over the next six months to a year and we\u2019ll need to snuff them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ebola evangelist<\/strong>
\nThe National Ebola Response Centre (Nerc), a new military-style body chaired by Koroma, launched Operation Western Area Surge last month in Sierra Leone \u2013 a country of six million people where the main industries are fishing and farming but which has huge, largely untapped, mineral reserves.<\/p>\n

A jingle is played repeatedly over loudspeakers at the command center: \u201cEbola go, we don\u2019t tire!\u201d<\/p>\n

Freetown\u2019s main Kingtom cemetery has been expanded and highly contagious bodies are buried in deep graves within 24 hours according to strict protocols to prevent transmission.<\/p>\n

Burials are important in West African culture, with mourners often touching the corpse in intimate, spiritual farewells to their loved ones. Ebola spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or the bodies of those the virus has killed.<\/p>\n

The Ebola centre has noted pockets of resistance in the capital, which officials attribute to mistrust of authorities owing to the weak response before the surge.<\/p>\n

In one home in the Devil Hole neighborhood outside Freetown, where a nine-year-old boy was taken away by medics, relatives said he caught Ebola from malaria drugs handed out by the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge is this last small group of people who aren\u2019t changing their behavior,\u201d said Joanna Reid, head of Britain\u2019s department for international development in Sierra Leone. \u201cThat\u2019s the last mile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aid workers say overcoming misperceptions and changing behavior was critical to breaking transmission chains in rural hotspots such as Kailahun, where case counts have fallen to zero. The same must now happen in Freetown, they say.<\/p>\n

David Heymann, head of Britain\u2019s Chatham House Center on Global Health Security, said current success and future progress is largely owing to communication.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve finally got strong communication … probably through traditional leaders and others who are helping communities understand how to prevent transmission. From my past experience with outbreaks, when communities learn how to communicate the risks and how to prevent infection, the outbreak stops \u2013 it\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some are taking matters into their own hands, such as Ebola survivor Mohamed Mansaray (61), who lost six family members to the virus in the fishing village of John Thorpe on the outskirts of Freetown.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were attributing the deaths to witchcraft, that\u2019s why people died,\u201d Mansaray said, sitting on a bench beneath a mango tree. Calling himself an \u201cEbola evangelist\u201d, he goes from house to house trying to educate locals about the disease.<\/p>\n

In a sign of change, John Thorpe residents are starting to bring their sick to a new center built by charity Oxfam.<\/p>\n

Cultural values<\/strong>
\nIt has proved more difficult to change attitudes in Freetown than in rural areas, despite a high case density in the city of one in around 300 people, a factor that would normally increase awareness.<\/p>\n

A November survey showed that less than half of respondents in and around Freetown had comprehensive knowledge of Ebola, the nation\u2019s lowest level.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Freetown, many live roaming lives so the possibility of transmitting correct messages is lower than in rural districts,\u201d said British anthropologist Paul Richards, who has 30 years of experience in Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

He said some people resisted because stopping transmission involved attacking key cultural values: \u201cYou have to abandon some of the basic features of being a good person: visiting the sick and doing the decent thing for the dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a positive sign, the percentage of corpses picked up by burial teams around Freetown testing positive for Ebola has dropped below 10%, compared with 30% before the surge, as families report suspected cases for treatment earlier.<\/p>\n

There is still much to be done. There is not yet a central database of Ebola contacts and there are only nine contacts for each Ebola case versus an average of 10-15 for Liberia.<\/p>\n

Even if contacts are established, officials often get lost searching a country with no postcodes and where street numbers are often not sequential.<\/p>\n

Speaking from the Nerc situation room, a converted court room used to try criminals from the 1991-2002 civil war, director OB Sisay says a key challenge is deploying resources quickly.<\/p>\n

Nerc needs approval from partners such as the World Bank to allocate budgets, a safeguard against embezzlement.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s say I need food to quarantine a community. It can take two weeks,\u201d said Sisay in an interview interrupted every few minutes by demands from medics and local chiefs.<\/p>\n

Since Guinea\u2019s outbreak began in December 2013, officials have become aware Ebola can rear up from a single imported case, as occurred in Mali in October.<\/p>\n

Koroma now wants to decentralize the Ebola response to handle isolated rural cases. But in a densely forested country where less than 10% of the roads are paved, it\u2019s difficult to get patients in the \u201cwet phase\u201d \u2013 vomiting and sometimes bleeding from the eyes and ears \u2013 into care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are getting there,\u201d said Karline Kleijer, operations manager for medical humanitarian aid organization Medicins Sans Frontieres in Sierra Leone. \u201cMajor steps have been made, but we still have a long way to go.\u201d \u2013 Reuters, additional reporting by James Harding Giahyue and Kate Kelland<\/p>\n

by M&G Emma Farge<\/a>, Umaru Fofana<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More ambulances, checkpoints and changes in behavior are keeping new Ebola cases in check, with hopes the govt could stamp out the virus by March. A military-style operation to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone has helped dramatically reduce new cases…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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