Getting to Zero by Sinead Walsh Oliver Johnson

Author:Sinead Walsh,Oliver Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786992505
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)
Published: 2018-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

seven | The response kicks off

SINEAD

Devastation in the north

The announcements about the new UN and UK missions in the second half of September had given us hope. There was also promising news from the first-hit districts in the east. The combination of an improving response, strong local leadership and changes in community behaviour had resulted in progress quashing the local outbreaks in those districts. In the first week of October, the district of Kenema reported just five cases and Kailahun only three.1 I later asked Yoti Zabulon from WHO what had made the difference in Kailahun. “We worked with the chiefs and the religious leaders,” he told me. “There were chief-led efforts at mobilising communities as well as talks in mosques and churches. It was a community-led effort to break transmission.” Leaders had worked with their communities to come up with local rules about how to deal with the epidemic and had then enforced them, such as having a rule that any visitors (“strangers”) had to be announced to the chief.

Community engagement varied considerably around the country but another bright spot at that time was Koinadugu district which had, thus far, managed to avoid a single Ebola case, the only district to do so. Granted, geography was helpful as Koinadugu was relatively remote. Critically, though, since Ebola had first hit Sierra Leone, community leaders in Koinadugu had undertaken vigorous mobilisation and, with voluntary input from local residents, set up a network of checkpoints all over the district to monitor and restrict movement. One community leader later said: “For that time, coming to Koinadugu was more difficult than going to the USA!”

At the same time, leaders in Koinadugu put systems in place to support the population to continue with trade and agriculture despite the movement restrictions. A fleet of communal trucks was made available to the district’s food growers for the export of their produce and goods to neighbouring markets.2

I had heard about these initiatives from a friend of mine who happened to be from Koinadugu and who was involved in their District Taskforce, and we had been happy to give them a small grant from the Embassy, as this was the best example I knew of where communities had taken action themselves which made a real difference. We kept our fingers crossed for them.

But this good news was overshadowed by the dire situation in the country as a whole. There were 290 new cases that first week of October, almost double the 157 cases from the first week of September.3,4 Of these 290 new cases, 233 were in Freetown and its surrounding rural areas, and in two northern districts: Port Loko and Bombali.

By early October, horror stories abounded in the north. The New York Times’ Adam Nossiter, one of the journalists who won a Pulitzer Prize for his long-term coverage of Ebola, wrote about ‘A Hospital from Hell’ that he visited in Bombali, the President’s home district, about a three-hour drive from Freetown. Adam’s article showed that all of Oliver’s

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