UN
Popular festival highlights need for Ebola prevention in Mali
Today marks the start of the five-day “Festival sur le Niger” in Ségou, Mali. In its 11th year, the festival brings together cultural actors, art professionals and institutions around the theme, Music, Culture and Social Development.
This year, however, festival organizers have had to take into account something they never had before: Ebola. Although Mali’s Ebola epidemic was declared over on 18 January, the country remains at risk from cases in neighbouring countries. Large-scale events like this present a potential spreading ground for the virus as they attract crowds in the thousands, including from neighboring Guinea where the first Ebola case in Mali originated.
At a national coordination meeting of Ebola response partners in Bamako, Ebola prevention methods for the festival were top on the agenda.
“A case can happen any time,” says Adama Thiam, Senior Coordinator for the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) in Mali. “As we keep saying, as long as there is Ebola in Guinea, in the region, we must keep up preventive measures and stay vigilant.”
Ebola response partners around the table raised the need for increased outreach and awareness raising, especially among youth at the festival, as well as additional resources for hygiene services.
Professor Samba Sow heads up the Centre for Vaccine Development in Mali and has been a key figure in the national Ebola response.
“We shouldn’t wait for Ebola to come back to Mali,” says Sow. “We need to be proactive. We need to be out in the field, out in the communities, and prepositioning teams to reinforce health systems, systems of surveillance, and maintain our pressure.”
Featuring guests like Grammy Award-winning Oumou Sangaré, the festival packs in thousands from across the country each year. With all of the close contact of audience members, organizers and Ebola response partners alike fear it presents a rife opportunity for a new case.
Dr. Ibrahima Socé Fall is the World Health Organization Representative and Head of UNMEER in Mali.
“We haven’t stopped. Even after we declared the end of the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in Mali, we immediately put in place a new response plan to show how we will reinforce the health system,” says Fall. “We are continuing to reinforce the message that we need to keep up our prevention efforts, but we know that once people start to see there are no more cases, many of them start to return to their old habits. So we need to keep showing that there’s a risk.”
The festival runs from 4 to 8 February along the banks of the Niger River and is organized to showcase the attractions and potential of the region, and support the local economy.
The last patient in treatment in Mali recovered and was discharged on 12 December. Meanwhile, as of the week ending on 25 January, Sierra Leone had 65 confirmed new cases of Ebola, Guinea had 30 and Liberia had four. The total of 99 new cases marks the lowest level since late June.
