While listening to Obama’s “State of the Union” address this week, I noted that he claimed victory over the spread of Ebola.
That’s how we stopped the spread of Ebola in West Africa. Our military, our doctors, and our development workers set up the platform that allowed other countries to join us in stamping out that epidemic.
Since Obama’s has real talent for making claims that turn out to be the opposite of reality, I remarked that we would likely see another outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever again shortly.
Right on cue, and days after West Africa was declared “Ebola free”, a new case has been reported in Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone officials have confirmed a death from Ebola, hours after the World Health Organization declared the latest West Africa outbreak over.The country was declared free of the virus on 7 November, and the region as a whole was cleared when Liberia was pronounced Ebola-free on Thursday.Tests on a person who died in northern Sierra Leone proved positive, an Ebola test centre spokesman told the BBC.
WHO is now trying to track down potentially infected individuals before another significant outbreak of the dread disease occurs. Dozens apparently were exposed to this year’s patient zero.
A woman who died of Ebola this week in Sierra Leone potentially exposed dozens of other people to the disease, according to an aid agency report on Friday, raising the risk of more cases just as the deadliest outbreak on record appeared to be ending.Just a day earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared that “all known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa” after Liberia joined Sierra Leone and Guinea in going six weeks with no reported new cases. The three countries had borne the brunt of a two-year epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people….Compiled by a humanitarian agency that asked not to be named, the document said the victim, Mariatu Jalloh, had come into contact with at least 27 people, including 22 in the house where she died and five who were involved in washing her corpse. But its account suggested others could also be at risk.
WHO is now trying to manage expectations to reasonableness:
Sierra Leone is in a 90-day period of enhanced surveillance following a declaration in November of the end of Ebola transmission in the country. The period is designed to ensure no hidden chains of transmission have been missed and to detect any new flare-ups of the disease.The WHO stressed in its statement declaring the outbreak over on Thursday that the virus could return in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone because it persists in survivors after they have recovered.
I suspect that Obama’s State of the Union speech will go down in history…as the address being most divorced from reality ever given to Congress.
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