UN
UNMEER Head in Sierra Leone to push Ebola response surge
In response to rising transmission rates of Ebola Virus Disease in parts of Sierra Leone, the Head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), Anthony Banbury, travelled to the country on 11-12 December 2014 to meet with Ebola response partners and push forward the latest surge efforts to contain the outbreak.
In Freetown, Banbury received a briefing at the former Special Court for Sierra Leone, met with military logisticians at the British Council, and visited an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU), which is being run by the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and the Sierra Leone armed forces.
“It’s one of the few ETUs anywhere in the region that is run by the people in the country,” said Banbury. “They have very good outcomes, good survival rates; it’s working very well. It’s impressive.”
Stigma remains a major challenge to frontline responders. Ishmail Duncamara, who works at the government-run ETU, spoke about the challenges he faces daily as a result of his work on the Ebola response.
“This place is an Ebola centre. People at the Ebola centre are killed. So people really do not accept us at home at all, they drive us away. Because of clemency we volunteer for this job, not because of the salary scale. We want to save our people.”
With some 8,069 cases, Sierra Leone is now the worst-affected country in West Africa. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have so far registered over 18,000 cases of Ebola, including more than 6,300 deaths.
The increasingly high transmission rates in Sierra Leone were reported in recent weeks, leading the Government of Sierra Leone and UNMEER to mount a surge response.
“We need to put in place a big surge to get those case numbers down, and we’ve been working on implementing that surge in the last week,” said Banbury. “I came yesterday to see how that’s going, how the preparations are…and to see what more UNMEER can do.”
While Banbury congratulated Sierra Leone on the implementation of the ETU, he also thanked everyone who works on the front lines of Ebola response, and congratulated them on their joint recognition as Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
“I was really pleased that Time Magazine acknowledged really the incredible work that has been done by front line Ebola responders. Particularly, I think the health care workers deserve the greatest appreciation and respect. In some way acknowledging my contribution, I think it was really much more an acknowledgment of the contribution of the United Nations and UNMEER included, but not just UNMEER, the UN agencies and funds and programmes.”
After visiting the ETU, Banbury met with Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma, where they discussed the surge.
