Sierra Leone: State Of Emergency Declared As Scientist Search For Ebola’s Cure

By Staff Writer

Sierra Leone began quarantining areas of Ebola infection in the wake of a state of emergency as international World Health Organization (WHO) announced an international $100m response plan to combat the epidemic as death toll from the virus reaches 729 in West Africa.

Troops set up quarantines on Thursday July 31, hours after Sierra Leone's president, Ernest Bai Koroma, imposed a state of emergency and called a summit with regional leaders and the WHO on how control the crisis. 

"I hereby proclaim a state of public emergency to enable us take a more robust approach to deal with the Ebola outbreak," he said in a speech late on Wednesday July 30, adding that the measures would initially last between 60 and 90 days. "All centres of the disease will be quarantined," he added.

Koroma said that the police and the military would restrict movement between affected areas, and would provide support to health officers and NGOs following a number of attacks on health workers by local communities.

The president also said that house-to-house searches would be implemented to trace Ebola victims and quarantine them.

He added that new protocols had been established for passengers arriving and departing Lungi airport outside Freetown.

WHO on Thursday reported 57 new deaths in the four days to July 27 in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, raising the death toll to 729. It said the number of Ebola cases had topped 1,300.

WHO added that its $100m fund will be launched at a Friday August 1 meeting in Conakry, Guinea.

"The scale of the Ebola outbreak, and the persistent threat it poses, requires WHO and Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to take the response to a new level, and this will require increased resources," said Margaret Chan, WHO Director General.

"Sierra Leone is in a great fight. Failure is not an option," said Koroma.

Meanwhile health professionals who have traveled to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Togo to fight the epidemic are doing so armed with inadequate weapons, as no cure for Ebola virus exist.

In research labs across the world, scientists are working with one eye on Africa and the other on their work aiming to accelerate testing phases of potential vaccines for the virus.

Currently, doctors in West Africa are only providing supportive measures for the infected by treating their symptoms in isolation while decked head-to-toe in protective gear.

However, despite their best efforts, many of the medical workers fighting the Ebola outbreak have contracted and succumbed to the virus during treatment including the Ebola’s Head Doctor, Sheik Umar Khan.

On June 13, scientists in Canada announced one potential breakthrough in the search for an Ebola vaccine.

According to researchers from National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba other hopeful prospects include the drug TKM-Ebola, the compound BCX4430, and a vaccine featuring a harmless strain of vesicular stomatitis virus.

The vaccine is termed promising as it could be used to treat the disease even after infection, much like the rabies vaccine.