104 Ebola Patients On Death Role

The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare discloses that 104 persons up to date are tested and confirmed as Ebola patients while the total number of deaths from the Ebola virus in the country has risen to 66.

The Ebola virus has no cure, the virus kills up to 95 percent of the people it infects, but it leaps from person to person only through contact with bodily fluids but medical teams have always effectively segregated infected areas and stopped the virus’s spread.

With the medical confirmation that the virus has no cure means the 104 persons infected with Ebola in the country are likely to be on dead roll, they might die in twenty-one days time which Information Minister Lewis brown said is the less surviving days for the virus carriers.

Health authorities struggling to control the worst outbreak of Ebola on record said drastic action is needed to prevent more deaths, with the outbreak, already the deadliest in history, had killed almost 400 people as of last week Thursday in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The reports added that to this day, the health ministries of the three countries lack effective ways to build public awareness.

According to an alarming report released last week by Doctors Without Borders, West Africa’s current Ebola outbreak is “out of control.” That should shock the governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia into action. It marks a frightening moment for a disease that has been contained numerous times before.

Addressing the Ministry of Information regular press briefing in Monrovia, Assistant Health Minister for Preventive Services, Tolbert Nyenswah said of the 66 deaths, Lofa County accounts for 35.

Lofa, which borders Guinea and Sierra Leone that are also fighting the Ebola menace, is where the first case of Ebola was reported in Liberia in May. Montserrado County, which hosts the Liberian capital Monrovia, accounts for 29, while two deaths are recorded in Margibi County, situated about 35 kilometers from the capital Monrovia.

Mr. Nyesuah put the cumulative probable and suspected cases at 104 and total confirmed cases at 48. He said the Ministry of Health in collaboration with World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners has been "aggressively responding to the unprecedented Ebola outbreak in human history.

According to Assistant Minister Nyenswah four units have been established in the country to isolate and quarantine Ebola patients for thorough observation and treatment.

He added that ambulances are constantly patrolling communities to pick up people with symptoms of the Ebola virus to be taken to isolation units at John F. Kennedy, Firestone and ELWA hospitals and other health posts in Lofa County.

Nyenswah said the Health Ministry will start the training of health workers on Friday, targeting 500 health facilities in Montserrado County on how to deal with Ebola infection control. The Health Ministry official announced that as at 2 July, record shows that one doctor and eight other health workers have died of the Ebola virus. He urged heads of targeted health facilities to cooperate with the training teams to help deal with the Ebola problem.

Information Minister Lewis Brown says the fight against the deadly Ebola virus should involve all Liberians, and that the country should use all its human resource capacity in combating the menace.

Minister Brown has accordingly called on Liberians not to treat the issue of the Ebola outbreak as “a joke,” but as “a serious matter” that all Liberians must help to eradicate from their society. Minister Brown informed Liberians about the damaging effects of the Ebola virus saying, “Even a medical doctor and health workers have been victims of the Ebola virus and it is not like AIDS that you can live with it for some time.”

He noted that Liberians as a people overcame and braved the storm of so many difficulties in the past and as such the fight against Ebola must be a collective battle by all Liberians until the nation is fully recovered from the disease. He warned Liberians to desist from seeking medication from traditional doctors or churches when hit by the Ebola virus.

The Ebola virus has killed 66 people so far in Liberia since its outbreak in the country in May. The Ministry of Health has announced that it has launched a robust campaign to combat the virus by quarantining suspected patients as well as distribution of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to medical practitioners.

Meanwhile, a Ugandan senior surgeon has succumbed to the Ebola virus in Liberia where he had been working for three years as a health specialist. Dr. Samuel Muhumuza Mutoro died on Tuesday at the John F. Kennedy Medical Centre, Liberia’s biggest hospital in Monrovia where he was being treated. Muhumuza was a surgeon assigned to Redemption Hospital in New Kru Town on a contract with the Liberian government and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

At the time of his death, Muhumuza is said to have volunteered to treat a colleague who was infected with Ebola, thereby exposing himself to the deadly disease. His wife, Diana Namusoke, a mother of three, told New Vision that the family was notified about his death by an official from Liberia’s government. Rev Jehoida Mutoro of South Rwenzori Diocese, the only brother of the deceased said the bereaved family have been advised against travelling to Liberia as earlier planned. A requiem mass is scheduled this morning at 9:00am at Mbarara University of Science and Technology.

Costa Bwambale, a brother-in-law of the deceased, described the Muhumuza as a ‘very determined’ person, who even repeated class in order to achieve his dream of becoming a medical doctor. It is believed that yesterday Muhumuza’s remains were disposed of immediately since World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines recommend the immediate disposal of Ebola victims. At his home in Mbaguta cell, Ruharo, in Mbarara neighbours gathered and held a wake to commiserate with the relatives. With his earnings from Liberia, he had started the construction of a storeyed residential structure in Ruharo town suburbs.

That toll is greater than the 280 people killed in 1976, when the virus was first identified near the Ebola River in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The reports gathered from foreign wires said it began in March but then slowed, causing the Guinean president to declare to the World Health Organization (WHO) in April that “the situation is well in hand.” But all was not well, and complacency led to relaxed measures and a second surge.

The reports further revealed that more than 600 cases have now been reported, with the patients experiencing headache, fever and internal and external bleeding..

Unlike some viruses — including the one causing Middle East respiratory syndrome — Ebola is not new. It was discovered in 1976, and small outbreaks have been recorded occasionally since then.