The Ghanaian government has pledged to put its medical research
center at the service of experts seeking to contain the spread of the
deadly Ebola virus.
Ghana's Noguchi Memorial Institute "will be
available to support research into how we can contain and find the
needed vaccines to make sure that this outbreak does not occur again,"
Health Minister Sherry Ayitey told a West African ministerial meeting in
Accra – devoted to discussing the Ebola crisis – on Wednesday.
"At
this crucial moment, our sister countries also need financial resources
to support the effort going on to fight the Ebola virus," she said. "So
we would like to appeal to our development partners to… support the
three countries so they can procure the needed drugs to support health
personnel fighting Ebola."
She called on attendant health
ministers "to go back home and discuss with heads of state if it's
possible that countries within the sub-region can make contributions to
support our three sister countries."
Held under the auspices of
the World Health Organization, the two-day meeting aims to review the
current Ebola situation and share experiences regarding preventive and
control measures.
The meeting is being attended by the health
ministers of Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Mali, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Ivory Coast.
Ebola is a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure.
According to the WHO, the virus – which tends to cause severe viral hemorrhagic fever – has a fatality rate of some 90 percent.
The virus can be transmitted to humans from wild animals and also spreads through human-to-human transmission.
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are all struggling with recent Ebola outbreaks.
As
of June 17, a total of 264 Ebola deaths and 398 infections had been
reported in Guinea; 24 deaths and 33 infections in Liberia; and 49
deaths and 97 infections in Sierra Leone, according to the WHO.
The
tropical fever first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC. It was
named after the Ebola River, which runs close to the Congolese town of
Yambuku – the site of the first documented case of the virus.
-Partnership-
Luis
Gomes Sambo, the WHO's regional director for Africa, called for
"stronger national leadership and international partnership" as a means
of supporting countries affected by Ebola.
"At the end of the
meeting, we expect to agree on a single inter-country strategy, which
will galvanize key actors, bring together expertise, and mobilize
additional resources for accelerated actions to combat the epidemic," he
said at the meeting.
Sambo underscored the need to carry out research to address the knowledge gap in relation to the virus' evolution.
He went on to call on the global and African research community to help find a cure for Ebola.
In
exclusive statements to Anadolu Agency, Sierra Leone's Deputy Health
Minister Abubakar Fofana said there was a 30.7-percent fatality rate for
Ebola victims in his country.
"We have challenges that pose serious threats to our campaign against the disease," Fofana told AA.
"These
are issues like ignorance, illiteracy, denial and culture. These are
leading to denial from the people; they even go to the extent of causing
violence to health workers," he said.
According to Fofana, Sierra Leone's government has set up an emergency taskforce to tackle the Ebola crisis.
"This
emergency taskforce was chaired by the health minister. We meet every
day and we are able to come up with an emergency preparedness plan," he
said.
"We also put together an inter-ministerial team to make high-level political decisions that need to be done," he added.
By Umaru Sanda Amadu
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