HEALTH-EBOLA/LIBERIA ENVOY Liberia sees results in Ebola fight but long way to go -US envoy
Record ID:
708206
HEALTH-EBOLA/LIBERIA ENVOY Liberia sees results in Ebola fight but long way to go -US envoy
- Title: HEALTH-EBOLA/LIBERIA ENVOY Liberia sees results in Ebola fight but long way to go -US envoy
- Date: 28th October 2014
- Summary: MONROVIA, LIBERIA (OCTOBER 28, 2014) (REUTERS) **** WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **** UNITED STATES (U.S.) AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS (U.N.) SAMANTHA POWER AND LIBERIAN PRESIDENT ELLEN JOHNSON-SIRLEAF WALK IN A HALL (SOUNDBITE) (English) SAMANTHA POWER, SAYING: "We are beginning to see results. We are seeing safe burials occur at a much higher percentage than occurred in the early months of this crisis. We visit today in Bong county a mobile lab to test samples for Ebola. Before that lab was deployed, it took as long as five days for the samples to come from Bong county here to Monrovia in order to get a result. While the samples were moving and the five days was passing, Liberians were just waiting to know their fate. And that meant the people with Ebola were intermingled with people who might have malaria or some other ailment, and that was an infection control issue. Now with the deployment with one mobile lab, it is possible to get results not in five days but in less then five hours." VARIOUS OF PEOPLE LISTENING (SOUNDBITE) (English) SAMANTHA POWER, SAYING: "My main message to the Liberian people on behalf of President Obama is that we will beat this. Liberia has come through many difficult chapters in its history, and we know the track and the course that Liberia was on before Ebola came to this country recently. And that is a track toward more prosperity, more employment for young people, power Africa, and the deepening of your democracy over time. And that is the path that I can commit to you on behalf of the president and on behalf of the American people, that we will work together to ensure you get back on, and we will see at the back end of this epidemic, and we will beat this epidemic together." JOURNALIST (SOUNDBITE) (English) SAMANTHA POWER, SAYING: "We recognize that Ebola is taken its toll on Liberia economy, on employment, on the health sector, the non-Ebola part of the health sector, on education with the schools closed because of the severity of the epidemic. But we are committed to working with Liberia through the long haul of getting each of those sectors back on track, and fighting the fear and the stigma that exist around Ebola." SAMANTHA POWER AND LIBERIAN PRESIDENT, ELLEN JOHNSON-SIRLEAF AT LECTERN PRESIDENT ELLEN JOHNSON-SIRLEAF LISTENING PAN FROM SAMANTHA POWER TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON-SIRLEAF (SOUNDBITE) (English) LIBERIAN PRESIDENT, ELLEN JOHNSON-SIRLEAF, SAYING: "We would just like the international community to continue this as a global threat, that stigmatisation, exclusion, restriction is not the appropriate response to this. We would like for them to recognise the progress being made by all the affected countries and be able to join in the partnership to make sure that there is full containment of this; that's the only way to ensure the safety of our one world is by working, as we do; do what we can to eradicate this virus, not only from these countries, but from the world." END OF NEWS CONFERENCE AMERICANS WORKING ON EBOLA CAMP VARIOUS OF EBOLA SIGNS ON STREET TRAFFIC
- Embargoed: 12th November 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Liberia
- Country: Liberia
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA1II2UV6YYL3ZZ7OL6H72BU6E3
- Story Text: Liberia is beginning to see results from international help to fight Ebola with more safe burials, and laboratory testing times cut from five days to five hours in one remote area, which then frees treatment beds, U.S. envoy Samantha Power said on Tuesday (October 28).
Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, arrived in Liberia on Tuesday after visiting Guinea and Sierra Leone to assess what more then world could do to help Ebola-stricken West Africa.
She said safe burials were taking place at a much higher rate than the early months of the crisis. In neighbouring Sierra Leone the number of safe burials of Ebola victims has tripled in the past week in the capital Freetown.
Power visited Bong County, about 200 km east of Monrovia, where the United States has set up a mobile laboratory and an Ebola Treatment Unit, which USAID said is the first operational facility outside of the capital.
"We are beginning to see results. We are seeing safe burials occur at a much higher percentage than occurred in the early months of this crisis. We visit today in Bong county a mobile lab to test samples for Ebola. Before that lab was deployed, it took as long as five days for the samples to come from Bong county here to Monrovia in order to get a result. While the samples were moving and the five days was passing, Liberians were just waiting to know their fate. And that meant the people with Ebola were intermingled with people who might have malaria or some other ailment, and that was an infection control issue. Now with the deployment with one mobile lab, it is possible to get results not in five days but in less then five hours," Power said.
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin Espinosa, officer in charge of the laboratory, told Power that since the lab became operation three weeks ago it had tested some 280 samples and in that time the positive rate had dropped to a third from half.
He said this showed an increase in awareness among Liberians of the symptoms of Ebola, which can be mistaken for Malaria. Testing times had decreased to five hours from five days because samples no longer had to be transported to Monrovia.
"My main message to the Liberian people on behalf of President Obama is that we will beat this. Liberia has come through many difficult chapters in its history, and we know the track and the course that Liberia was on before Ebola came to this country recently. And that is a track toward more prosperity, more employment for young people, power Africa, and the deepening of your democracy over time. And that is the path that I can commit to you on behalf of the president and on behalf of the American people, that we will work together to ensure you get back on, and we will see at the back end of this epidemic, and we will beat this epidemic together," said Power.
Power also toured a converted 25-bed U.S. military hospital staffed by the U.S. Public Health Service in Monrovia, which opens in the next two weeks and will be used just to treat international and local health care workers who become infected.
"We recognize that Ebola is taken its toll on Liberia economy, on employment, on the health sector, the non-Ebola part of the health sector, on education with the schools closed because of the severity of the epidemic. But we are committed to working with Liberia through the long haul of getting each of those sectors back on track, and fighting the fear and the stigma that exist around Ebola," said Power.
With several U.S. states imposing a mandatory quarantine on returning health care workers and Australia implementing a ban on visas for the three worst-affected countries, Sirleaf appealed for the countries to view Ebola as a "global threat."
"We would just like the international community to continue this as a global threat, that stigmatisation, exclusion, restriction is not the appropriate response to this. We would like for them to recognise the progress being made by all the affected countries and be able to join in the partnership to make sure that there is full containment of this; that's the only way to ensure the safety of our one world is by working, as we do; do what we can to eradicate this virus, not only from these countries, but from the world," said Sirleaf.
Some 5,000 people have been killed by the deadly hemorrhagic fever, which is spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person, mainly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, while there has been a handful of cases in Senegal, Nigeria, Mail, Spain and the United States.
Power warned the fight against Ebola in West Africa was far from over.
- Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None