WHO representative Dr. Anders Nordstrom said around 70 people in the northern districts of Kambia, Port Loko and Tonkolili are being released from quarantine, however, an additional 48 people, 18 of them at very high risk of having the virus, are missing.
“We need to strengthen surveillance efforts to identify and investigate all patients with symptoms meeting the case definition in hospitals and communities and to investigate all deaths in the Kambia District and all districts,” he said Wednesday, reported the New York Times.
The WHO said it would continue to monitor, assuring that all deaths are reported and swabs taken to confirm Ebola until June 2016 to prevent an occurrence, Nordstrom said.
A young woman became the first Ebola case after Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free when she died on January 12, 2016. She was given a traditional burial because Ebola wasn’t suspected, reports ABC News. Later tests proved she was infected with the virus. The young woman’s aunt also became infected with the virus but received treatment.
What is intriguing about the latest WHO announcement about the missing contacts is that Al Jazeera reported on January 21 that according to Reuters, internal health reports showed at least 50 people exposed to the young woman who died on Jan. 12 had gone missing.
The missing contacts are from the Tonkolili district where the young woman died. An important clue is that there were also reports of fear and suspicion in the district after the latest death, hampering officials who were trying to keep track of contacts.
Traditional burials in many African countries include mourners touching the body, a major source of virus transmission. Almost 4,000 people died before Sierra Leone before it was declared Ebola-free on November 7, 2015.
