Liberia president sacks 10 officials told to return to fight Ebola

[Informer]

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf attends the opening ceremony of the 22nd Ordinary Session of the African Union summit in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa


Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has sacked 10 senior officials because they failed to heed a warning to return from overseas travel to help the government's fight against an Ebola epidemic that has killed at least 1,100 Liberians.

The officials, who include six assistant ministers, two deputy ministers and two commissioners, were dismissed with immediate effect for being "out of the country without an excuse," according to a statement from the president's office.

They were initially told in August to return to Liberia.

"These government officials showed insensitivity to our national tragedy and disregard for authority," said the statement released late on Saturday. It did not make clear what role the government expected the officials to play in the response to the crisis, or why they were out of the country.

The contagious, hemorrhagic fever was first discovered in eastern Guinea in March and has killed more than 2,400 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, making it the worst Ebola outbreak the world has seen.

In the process, it has stretched the understaffed and poorly resourced healthcare systems of those countries to breaking point.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where more than half of the deaths have been recorded. It has said that thousands are at risk of contagion in the coming weeks.

Sirleaf on Saturday appealed to U.S. President Barack Obama for urgent aid in tackling Ebola.

The disease has taken a particularly heavy toll on healthcare workers who have stationed themselves on the frontline of the fight against the disease.

Some 144 healthcare workers have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to Sept. 7 figures from the World Health Organization (WHO).The first Sierra Leonean female doctor to be diagnosed with Ebola died on Sunday, according to two government sources.

Olivette Buck was head of the Lumley Health Centre in a densely-populated suburb west of the capital Freetown. She tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, apparently contracting it as she treated an Ebola patient.

"I can confirm that doctor Olivette Buck died between last night and this morning," Jarrah Kawusu-Konteh, of the State House communication unit, told Reuters.

Doctors are held in high esteem in countries like Sierra Leone that have a low percentage of trained medical professionals per head of population. She was the fourth Sierra Leonean doctor to die of Ebola.

Her death came amid calls for her evacuation to Germany for treatment. Civil society group WeCare SL and the Sierra Leone Medical and Dental Association both urged the government to save her.

President Ernest Bai Koroma also wrote to the WHO on Friday requesting the U.N. health agency to evacuate Buck, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

A senior government official said the WHO declined the request, but offered instead to make available an experimental treatment locally. There was no immediate response from the WHO to a request for comment.


ALSO;

Liberian president appeals to Obama for U.S. help to beat Ebola

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has appealed to U.S. President Barack Obama for urgent aid in tackling the worst recorded outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, saying that without it her country would lose the fight against the disease.

The outbreak, which was first discovered in March, has now killed more than 2,400 people mostly in Liberia, neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, as understaffed and poorly resourced West African healthcare systems have been overrun.


The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where more than half of the deaths have been recorded. It has said that thousands are at risk of contagion in the coming weeks.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has set up several treatment centres in the affected countries but has also repeatedly warned it has reached the limits of its capacity and appealed for foreign governments to intervene.


In a letter dated September 9 seen by Reuters, Johnson Sirleaf appealed to Obama to build and operate at least one Ebola treatment unit in the capital Monrovia, saying that U.S. civilian and military teams had experience in dealing with biological hazards.


With the Liberian government due to open a 100-bed treatment centre and MSF scaling up its Ebola facility in Monrovia to 400 beds, Johnson Sirleaf said there was still a shortfall of 1,000 beds in the capital as well as a need for 10 new centres in the rest of the country.


"Without more direct help from your government, we will lose this battle against Ebola," Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on women's rights, wrote to Obama.


The U.S. government has committed around $100 million to tackle the outbreak by providing protective equipment for healthcare workers, food, water, medical and hygiene equipment.


The U.S. military said this week it would build a 25-bed field hospital in Liberia to care for infected health workers but it would hand this to Liberians to run.


On Friday, the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah Malac said Washington would train security forces in isolation operations, after a boy was shot dead last month when Liberian soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting at a quarantine in a Monrovia neighbourhood.


WORST THREAT SINCE CIVIL WAR


Liberian officials have called the outbreak the greatest threat to national stability since a 1989-2003 civil war, which killed nearly 250,000 people. Many ordinary people in Liberia, a nation founded by descendants of freed American slaves, look for help to the United States.


Cuba on Friday announced that it would deploy 165 medical personnel to Sierra Leone next month, the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses committed so far.


Johnson Sirleaf said that Ebola treatment centres were full and were being forced to turn away the sick.


"We are sending them home where they are a risk to their families and the communities. I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us," she wrote.


"Only governments like yours have the resources and assets to deploy at the pace required to arrest the spread," Johnson Sirleaf wrote to Obama, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate.


In a country with large numbers of unemployed former child soldiers, Johnson Sirleaf said the outbreak threatened civil order. With healthcare workers staying away from work, after dozens of their colleagues contracted the virus, citizens were also dying of other, treatable illnesses, she said.


Johnson Sirleaf asked the United States to assist in restoring services in at least 10 non-Ebola hospitals. Liberia also asked for U.S. help in establishing an air bridge to transport personnel and equipment after all but two private airlines have cancelled their flights.

4th doctor dies of Ebola in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has lost a fourth doctor to Ebola after a failed effort to transfer her abroad for medical treatment, a government official said Sunday, a huge setback to the impoverished country that is battling the virulent disease amid a shortage of health care workers.

Dr. Olivet Buck died late Saturday, hours after the World Health Organization said it could not help medically evacuate her to Germany, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo confirmed to The Associated Press.


Sierra Leone had requested funds from WHO to transport Buck to Europe, saying the country could not afford to lose another doctor.


WHO had said that it could not meet the request but instead would work to give Buck "the best care possible" in Sierra Leone, including possible access to experimental drugs.


Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients, making doctors and nurses especially vulnerable to contracting the virus that has no vaccine or approved treatment.


More than 300 health workers have become infected with Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nearly half of them have died, according to WHO.


The infections have exacerbated shortages of doctors and nurses in West African countries that were already low on skilled health personnel.


So far, only foreign health and aid workers have been evacuated abroad from Sierra Leone and Liberia for treatment.


Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor, was being considered for evacuation to a European country when he died of the disease in late July.