Liberia Declares State of Emergency as Ebola Toll Rises
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf declared a state of emergency to fight an outbreak of Ebola, saying the scale of the epidemic represented a threat to state security.
“The government and people of Liberia require extraordinary measures for the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people,” she said in an official statement. “I ... hereby declare a State of Emergency throughout the Republic of Liberia effective as of Aug. 6, 2014 for a period of 90 days.”
The outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever has overwhelmed rudimentary healthcare systems and prompted the deployment of troops to quarantine the worst-hit areas in the remote border region of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease hit 932 in West Africa.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 45 new deaths in the three days to Aug. 4, and its experts began an emergency meeting in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss whether the outbreak constitutes a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” and to discuss new measures to contain the outbreak.
International alarm at the spread of the disease increased when a U.S. citizen died in Nigeria late last month after flying there from Liberia. The health minister said on Wednesday that a Nigerian nurse who had treated the deceased Patrick Sawyer had herself died of Ebola, and five other people were being treated in an isolation ward in Lagos, Africa’s largest city.
In Saudi Arabia, a man suspected of contracting Ebola during a recent business trip to Sierra Leone also died early on Wednesday in Jeddah, the Health Ministry said. Saudi Arabia has already suspended pilgrimage visas from West African countries, which could prevent those hoping to visit Mecca for the Haj in early October.
Liberia, where the death toll is rising fastest, is struggling to cope. Many residents are panicking, in some cases casting out the bodies of family members onto the streets of Monrovia to avoid quarantine measures.
Beneath heavy rain, ambulance sirens wailed through the otherwise quiet streets of Monrovia on Wednesday as residents heeded a government request to stay at home for three days of fasting and prayers, Reuters reported.
