At the end of the first week in which no new Ebola cases have been reported within its borders since last year’s mass outbreak, Sierra Leone has ended an Ebola lockdown in the northern village of Massessebeh that had kept more than 500 residents in quarantine.
President Ernest Bai Koroma cut the yellow ribbon that had ringed the village in the northern district of Tonkolili on Friday to mark the completion of the standard 21-day quarantine period.
“None of the villagers tested positive (for Ebola),” a health ministry official told reporters, adding that only two people nationwide are still being treated for the virus nationwide.
President Koroma described the lifting of the last large-scale quarantine in the country as “a special day in the lives of the people”, but he cautioned against “complacency in the fight against the receding virus”, according to his speech which was broadcast on national radio.
“Only two patients (both in the northern district of Bombali) are in treatment centres throughout the country”, Koroma told the cheering villagers.
“But you should not rest until Ebola is eradicated,” he said. “Our efforts should be sustained until the last case is discharged,” he added, his voice occasionally drowned out by the sound of drums and animal horns.
“I shall be making on-the-spot checks across the country,” Koroma warned, without giving further details.
Massessebeh, a predominantly agricultural village some 200 kilometres (120 miles) from the capital, went on alert three weeks ago after a trader from Freetown who was visiting his mother tested positive for Ebola and later died.
But with no cases emerging in the village, the director of the National Ebola Response Centre’s Situation Room, Ibrahim Sesay, said the country was making progress in its battle against haemorrhagic fever.
“We are doing 90 per cent better,” he told reporters, adding: “There has not been any new case of Ebola throughout the country for more than a week now and only 86 people are in quarantine nationwide.”
Ebola has claimed around 11,300 lives since late 2013. More than 99 per cent of these occurred in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.
