Ebola forces state emergency in Sierra Leone

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Sierra Leone began quarantining areas of Ebola infection after declaring a state of public emergency to tackle the worst outbreak of Ebola in history, which has killed more than 700 people in West Africa, reports Aljazeera.
Security forces set up quarantines on Thursday, hours after Ernest Bai Koroma, the president, ordered a state of emergency, cancelled a trip to the US and called a summt with regional leaders on how to deal with the crisis.
"I hereby proclaim a state of public emergency to enable us take a more robust approach to deal with the Ebola outbreak," he said in a speech late on Wednesday, adding that the measures would initially last between 60 and 90 days. "All centres of the disease will be quarantined," he added.
Koroma said that the police and the military would restrict movement between affected areas, and would provide support to health officers and NGOs following a number of attacks on health workers by local communities.
Koroma also said that house-to-house searches would be implemented to trace Ebola victims and quarantine them.
He added that new protocols had been established for passengers arriving and departing Lungi airport outside Freetown, but he did not provide further details.
The World Health Organisation on Thursday said the death toll from the outbreak of Ebola had risen to 729 after 57 deaths were reported between July 24 and 27 in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
The WHO also said Nigerian authorities had so far identified 59 people who had come into contact with a US citizen who died in Lagos last week after travelling from Liberia, via Togo and Ghana.

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