Interview: UN official urges vigilance as Ebola situation improves

A senior UN official has cautioned the three Ebola-affected West African Countries to remain vigilant and continue with safety measures until the disease gets completely contained.

"If we don't remain vigilant, that is where we can see a reversal and we don't want that," Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba Fatoumata, spokeswoman of the UN Mission for Emergency Ebola Response (UNMEER) in Accra, told Xinhua in an interview recently.

Fatoumata said since there were cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, they were all at risk for re-ignited outbreaks.

About 12 months after the largest ever Ebola outbreak began, the situation is finally improving.

Transmission is reduced from its peak in the three worst-hit countries - Guinea, Sierra Leone and especially in Liberia.

She said the rainy season was also fast approaching in the region and that very soon the rains would make outbreak control efforts more difficult, particularly in remote areas which were difficult to access.

"So, actually, we are in a very crucial period when we see the numbers going down because that is when people relax," Fatoumata said.

"They go back to the normal lives which we understand. It is very human, people might want to get back to work, they want to do what they used to do, they want to be able to touch family."

She cautioned that until all countries have zero cases, people need to make sure that they behave like Ebola is still real and that one case can spark an outbreak.

Fatoumata praised the international community for its response since the outbreak began last year.

She said, thanks to the efforts by the international community, all the three countries had the capacities and facilities in place to control further spread of the disease.

She however said the international community would do West Africa and the world a favor by making sure that Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were in a position, when Ebola was gone, to deal with any new outbreaks.

"We have seen it with Ebola. It can come down and can come back and so if we don't want to get back to a situation where Ebola will become a major threat to the whole world again, we need to make sure that Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone can deal with any new outbreak," she said.

"We need to make sure that once Ebola is gone, when we reach the zero cases, that the UN agencies, the different NGOs, the governments themselves, still have in place the capacity to react immediately whenever Ebola comes back."

The UNMEER spokeswoman appealed to citizens of the three countries to visit the hospital to get immediate treatment if they start getting sick. Endi