Thursday 7 August 2014

Liberia President Declares State of Emergency over EBOLA Outbreak!

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Ebola Outbreak in Liberia

Containing the spread of the viral disease has been complicated by beliefs that the virus does not exist, suspicion of medical workers and a lack of basic health-care services.
The current outbreak is the worst since the virus was first reported in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

LIBERIA: Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf declared a 90-day state of emergency over Ebola as West African nations struggle to control an outbreak of the virus that has left at least 932 people dead.

Declaring the state of emergency overnight President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf warned that the extraordinary measures were needed "for the very survival of our state". The Liberian parliament will meet Thursday to ratify the move, while its Sierra Leone counterpart does the same following a state-of-emergency declaration there last week. Speaking of "a clear and present danger" from the virus which has claimed almost 1,000 lives in West Africa, Sirleaf announced that the state of emergency should last for a minimum of 90 days.

"The scope and scale of the epidemic, the virulence and deadliness of the virus now exceed the capacity and statutory responsibility of any one government agency or ministry," she said. Amid growing call for international help, Obama said it was too early to dispatch experimental drugs to Ebola victims in Africa See also: Second Ebola death in Nigeria amid fears epidemic 'out of control' Two Americans who worked for Christian aid agencies in Liberia were brought back to the United States for treatment in recent days. They are being given an experimental drug known as ZMapp, which is hard to produce on a large scale and have been showing signs of improvement.

The latest official toll across west Africa hit 932 deaths since the start of the year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, with 1,711 confirmed cases, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Fears are growing that the disease is also taking hold in Nigeria. The death of a nurse in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million, came as 45 deaths were confirmed across west Africa between Saturday and Monday, with aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, saying the terrifying tropical disease is out of control. Nigeria's Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters he was in contact with the US Center for Disease Control on the possibility of getting drugs from them.

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