Africa’s Ebola-hit nations establish isolation zone
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WEST Africa’s Ebola-hit nations have agreed to impose a cross-border isolation zone at the epicenter of the world’s worst-ever outbreak, amid warnings that the deadly epidemic is spiralling out of control.
The announcement came at an emergency summit in the Guinean capital, Conakry, on Friday to discuss the outbreak, which has killed more than 700 people, with the World Health Organization warning Ebola could cause “catastrophic” loss of life and severe economic disruption if it continued to spread.
“We have agreed to take important and extraordinary action to focus on cross-border regions that have more than 70 percent of the epidemic,” said Hadja Saran Darab, secretary-general of the Mano River Union bloc grouping the nations.
“These areas will be isolated by police and military. The people in these areas being isolated will be provided with material support,” she said. Opening the summit, WHO chief Margaret Chan told leaders that the response of the three countries to the epidemic had been “woefully inadequate.”
“If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic,” she said, adding that the outbreak is “by far the largest ever” in the four-decade history of the disease.
The leaders of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea used the summit to launch a US$100 million action plan that will see several hundred more medical staff deployed to battle the epidemic.
The three nations will also bolster efforts to prevent and detect suspected cases, urge better border surveillance, and reinforce the WHO’s sub-regional outbreak coordination center in Guinea.
Darab did not outline the exact area to be part of the isolation zone, but the epicenter of the out break has a diameter of almost 300 kilometers.
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