MONROVIA – Sierra Leone’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Amara Jambai, says there is no case of Ebola in Sierra Leone, contrary to media reports of discovered cases in the parts of the country including the capital, Freetown.
Dr. Jambai acknowledged that the news of a new outbreak was spread through a leaked document which was intended for internal use only as part of a stimulation exercise to test the country’s preparedness in case of a real outbreak.
The document, though titled press release, according to Dr. Jambai, was not meant for the public.
“There have been a total of five confirmed laboratory cases in Sierra Leone, three cases from Bo District and two cases in the Western Area Urban (Freetown),” the said press release stated.
Late in 2013, there were reports of the disease’s outbreak in neighboring Guinea. By March of 2014, the deadly hemorrhage disease had crossed over into Liberia starting so far the worst recorded deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus in history.
As of 30 September 2015, at least 28,424 cases had been reported in association with this outbreak, including 11,311 deaths, and new EVD cases were still being reported in two of the three most heavily impacted countries: Guinea (3,805 cases and Sierra Leone 13,911, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) back in 2015.
Of the total number of recorded deaths, Liberia reported the highest number in the tune of nearly 5000 of its citizens, most of whom had to be cremated, totally against the norm of handling its dead.