Liberia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is also the
seat of the Liberian presidency, has been hit by the deadly Ebola virus.
FrontPageAfrica has learned.
On Monday, the
Administrative Assistant to Foreign Minister Augustine Ngafuan
reportedly died from what sources say is a suspected case of the deadly
virus. Her husband, a staffer in the office of President Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf, is currently under quarantine, according to online news
portal, FrontPageAfrica.
The names of the officials
were withheld because the government has not officially notified the
public about the cases, so close to the Liberian presidency. Minister
Ngafuan’s office is two floors below the floor now being used as the
President’s office, the online news portal stated.
The
wife of the President’s office staffer reportedly died on Monday and may
have contracted the virus from a sister, who had previously died. A
praying woman who reportedly had sessions and laid hands on the sister
of the deceased Administrative Assistant, has also died.
Sources
within the Executive Mansion informed FrontPageAfrica Wednesday that
both the deceased Administrative Assistant in Minister Ngafuan’s office
and her husband had been told not to return to the office until after 21
days.
“They had not been coming to work for more than
21 days now,” the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because
they were not authorised to speak on the matter.
Minister Ngafuan is currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
attending an Emergency Meeting of the African Union’s Executive Council
on the Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak. Attempts to reach the minister and his press aide have been unsuccessful.
The
AU members are recommending the urgent lifting of all travel bans
imposed on countries affected by the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
The
Ministry has been the seat of the presidency since 2006 when fire
gutted the fourth floor during celebrations marking the 159th
Independence Day celebrations in the presence of three West African
leaders, who had come to witness the then newly-elected President Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf switch on electricity to reach limited parts of the
capital city.
South African forensic scientists brought
in to probe the cause of the fire said it was an electrical fault.
Following the fire outbreak at the Executive Mansion, the Government of
Liberia announced a closure of the Mansion, and President
Johnson-Sirleaf relocated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the
president has for the past eight years been performing official state
functions.
The mansion was constructed in 1964 under
the regime of the late Liberian President William Vacanarat Shadrach
Tubman by 2,000 workers, including about a fifth of Monrovia’s labour
force, and 150 foreign technicians. The eight-storey Executive Mansion
building, which costs US$20 million, has an atomic-bomb shelter, an
underground swimming pool, a private chapel, a trophy room, a cinema, an
emergency power plant, water supply and sewage system, among others.
The
report comes just 24 hours after Defence Minister Brownie Samukai told
the U.N. Security Council that the outbreak poses a “serious threat” to
the war-torn nation’s very existence. Samukai’s words were echoed by the
U.N. Secretary-General’s special representative Karin Landgren, who
said Liberia is facing its gravest threat since its decade-long civil
war ended in 2003. She deemed the outbreak a “latter-day plague” and its
spread “merciless.”
Liberia is worst hit among the
nations affected by the current Ebola epidemic with at least 1,200
recorded deaths. Over the past three weeks, the country has experienced a
68% bump in infections and the World Health Organization estimates the
surge will continue to accelerate in coming weeks.
Humanitarian
groups in the country have been complaining that there simply aren’t
enough beds and suspected victims of Ebola are reportedly turned back to
their communities or left waiting outside medical facilities,
aggravating the risk of further contagion.
At least 160
health workers have been infected with the virus and 79 have died, in a
nation that counted a paltry single doctor per 100,000 inhabitants at
its onset. Landgren pointed out that the challenge also goes beyond the
medical response.
“The enormous task of addressing
Ebola has revealed persistent and profound institutional weaknesses,
including in the security sector,” she said.
“As the demands pile on, the police face monumental challenges in planning and implementing large scale operations.”
Meanwhile,
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $50 million on
Wednesday to support emergency efforts to contain West Africa’s Ebola
epidemic, which has already killed almost 2,300 people in the worst
outbreak of the virus in history.
The U.S.-based
philanthropic foundation said it would release funds immediately to U.N.
agencies and international organisations to help them buy supplies and
scale up the emergency response in affected countries.
It
will also work with public and private sector partners to speed up to
development of drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics that could be effective
in treating Ebola patients and preventing further spread of the
haemorrhagic fever-causing virus.
“We are working
urgently with our partners to identify the most effective ways to help
them save lives now and stop transmission of this deadly disease,” Sue
Desmond-Hellmann, the Foundation’s chief executive officer, said in a
statement.
Latest data from the World Health
Organisation (WHO) show the Ebola outbreak, which began in March, has
infected almost 4,300 people so far, killing more than half of them.
The
deadly viral infection is raging in three countries – Guinea, Liberia,
Sierra Leone – and has also spread into neighbouring Nigeria and
Senegal.
The WHO said on Tuesday the Ebola death toll
jumped by almost 200 in a single day to at least 2,296 and is already
likely to be higher than that. It has previously warned that the
epidemic is growing “exponentially” and there could be up to 20,000
cases in West Africa before it is brought to a halt.
Chris
Elias, the Gates Foundation’s head of global development, said in a
telephone interview the group would be assessing over coming days where
funds could be best spent.
Some would go to the most
acute and immediate needs, he said, and some would be put towards more
longer-term research into treatments and ways of preventing future
outbreaks.
“The spread of this disease has really
happened because of the very weak health systems in these very poor
countries,” he said. “We need to be thinking how we can build up those
health services, how we train healthcare workers, and how we make sure
they have the equipment they need to do their jobs.”
The
Gates money comes after the British government and the Wellcome Trust
medical charity last month pledged 6.5 million pounds ($10.8 mln) to
speed up research on Ebola, a disease for which there is currently no
licensed treatment or vaccine.
The WHO has backed the
use of untested drugs, as long as conditions on consent are met, and is
hoping for improved supplies of experimental medicines by the end of the
year.
Britain’s minister for international
development, Justine Greening, welcomed the Gates support, saying the
“serious health, social and economic risks posed by one of the worst
outbreaks of the disease require the entire international community to
do more to assist”.
The Gates Foundation – set up by
the billionaire founder of Microsoft Bill Gates to fight disease and
poverty in poor countries – has already committed more than $10 million
to fight the Ebola outbreak, including $5 million to the WHO for
emergency operations and research and development assessments and $5
million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea.
In its statement, the
foundation said it would also give an extra $2 million immediately to
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support
incident management, treatment, and health care system strengthening.\
Source:PM News
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