“On the 8th May 2021, we will start the Ebola Vaccination in Kailahun and Kenema districts,” said Dr Allie Wurie, the Incident Manager of Ebola and the Director of Primary Health Care, MoHS.
He made this disclosure during the weekly government press briefing held in the conference room of the Ministry of Information and Communications at Youyi Building.
According to him, the Ebola vaccination will focus on the 8 border districts, which are Kailahun, Kono, Kenema, Koinadugu, Falaba , Kerene, Kambia and Pujehun districts and because these districts are in high risk due to common interaction and movements of people within those border communities and also due to the common traditional and cultural setup. He also said that the distribution of the Ebola vaccination is part of the proactive measures to prevent or contain the outbreak.
“On the 14th of February 2021, Guinea was declared an outbreak of the Ebola Virus disease.”
According to him, with the declaration of the Ebola disease in Guinea, the country alerted their six neigbouring countries including Sierra Leone.
“Since we have been alerted, we have raised our alertness to Phase Two on the same day in February 14th this year.”
He also added that the ministry established the DVD Preparedness and Response Incident Management Unit nationwide in order to prevent the Ebola outbreak to spill over to Sierra Leone and should in case it got here.
He further said that they have been doing active based search, heighten their surveillance system, doing community engagement and keeping strong relationship with the health workers.
He said, “We have been working with our health workers and traditional healers in the facilities to ensure that we increase their level of suspicion index on Ebola.”
He also added, “We have been having alerts but all have been negative, yet still our preparedness is quite different from 2014 because we already have experience on how to go about it.”
Dr Wurie also reminisced on how they finally got rid of Ebola in 2016.
“In the last phase of the Ebola outbreak in 2015 and 2016, we introduced the ring vaccination of contacts of confirmed cases and that strategy was expanded. It was piloted in Sierra Leone and Guinea, but when WHO saw that it was successful in preventing the spread they also adopted and applied it in the DRC.”
Dr Wurie further added that in 2019, WHO officially adopted the recommendation of the use of Ebola vaccines as one of the strategies to prevent the spread of the Ebola disease.
He also included the WHO, which has been engaging the six neighbouring countries: Liberia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Sierra Leone since the outbreak in Guinea this year in order for these countries to use the Ebola Vaccines to protect their health care workers.
He added, “Being that Sierra Leone is the most prepared for this disease, due to the limited amount of the vaccines available, WHO has made available over 8,000 Ebola Vaccines.”
According to him, priorities will be made to people like the health care workers, Okada riders, and traditional healers within the communities in the border districts.