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SOS From Liberia: WHO, Others Must Step In Before We All Die
Front Page Africa ^ | 8/17/14 | FPA Editorial

Posted on 08/17/2014 12:01:48 PM PDT by BlatherNaut

Judging from what happened in Monrovia last week, self-seeking presidential aides and kitchen Cabinet officials will shortly conclude and run to the president to say that this is a call for an interim government. IT IS NOT!!! This is an honest and sincere appeal to international humanitarian groups and the WHO to move in and for the president to dissolve her "Special Ebola Task Force because they have all failed and appear incapable of solving this plague killing our people and flirting with anarchy.

THIS IS AN URGENT SOS call to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and every international humanitarian organization to please intervene in Liberia before Africa’s oldest republic loses its entire population.

THE UNITED NATIONS must immediately call for the disbandment of the Liberian government task force and replace it with an international medical and management team capable of righting the wrongs by the post-war nation’s health system and saving many more Liberians from losing their lives.

WHAT HAPPENED last Saturday at a makeshift Ebola center in West Point is from our perspective the last straw that has broken whatever back this country or its government had in curbing the further spread and containing this deadly plague that has so far killed more than 2000 people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, since it emerged in February.

WHEN RESIDENTS in one of Liberia’s most populous and disease-infected areas run amok against an initiative undertaken by a volunteer nurse, who simply tried to do right for his people with a self-initiative isolation center because the government had turned its backs on the people, it is time for the international players to step in.

IN NURSE SAM TARPLAH’S OWN WORDS: “Some of the people kept at the center at the MV Massaquoi School were diagnosed positive and told to be in isolation at home because of insufficient space at the ELWA isolation center.”

TARPLAH SAID knowing the risk the presence of these Ebola positive patients will cause the community when they at home, he decided to keep them in one location, though not in the same room. According to him, there were a total of 29 persons that the center, but nine had died over the last few days. A day ago, he said a week patient fell on his forehead and died.

BY NIGHT FALL Saturday, at least seventeen positively tested Ebola patients had fled the facility. According to Tarplah, a lady from Bardnersville who brought food for her husband and a son, two of them Ebola positive, became angry when she was not allowed entry and as such some residents of West Point, assisted her in erecting sticks on the wall of the fence where the man and his son escaped. The remaining 17 left the isolation center assisted by angry residents of the West Point Community.

WHEN GOVERNMENT security and police forces are misguided in their priorities of sending armed police officers with tear gas to shut down a newspaper office and arrest journalists in the middle of a State of Emergency, when those officers should be assisting health workers and makeshift Ebola centers like ones in areas like West Point, maintain order, it is time for the international players to step in.

WHEN A PRESIDENT, knowingly appoints to a task force the same personalities in the health sector responsible for failing Liberia when this plague first started, it speaks volumes to the lack of seriousness, this government is applying to this crisis which according to major international stakeholders has gone out of control.

THESE OLD hands have nothing new to offer Liberia in this particular crisis. They all need to be replaced. This crisis does not need quantity, it needs quality, a small, tight-knit group of experts and ordinary folks who have Liberia at heart, not the same old hands who have failed us when their leadership is needed most.

BLAIR GLENCORSE AND BROOKS HARMON, writing in the current edition of Foreign Policy magazine said it rightly: “The Ebola crisis is quickly exposing how rapidly progress can be undermined, however, when it is not grounded in a fair, inclusive social compact between governments and their citizens. It is no coincidence that, in the countries at the heart of the outbreak, large groups of people have been systematically excluded from power and decision-making at all levels for decades. This means many citizens are unwilling to believe that the government can serve their interests. The health system in Liberia is a case in point. Despite millions of dollars of investment in the decade before the Ebola outbreak, there were only 150 trained doctors in the entire country of 3.5 million people. As a result, access to services is inevitably exclusionary, lending itself to networks of corruption as patients do anything they can to receive care.”

WHEN THE CASUALTY numbers in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea where the outbreak started, continue to drop and Liberia’s numbers continue to climb, it is time for international players to step in.

WHEN AFTER watching most of their colleagues die and isolated by a government which failed to provide simple gloves and masks, which nurse or doctor in their right state of mind would want to return to work when a government makes promises to make conditions better in the absence of insurance or a guarantee to health care-workers' family that they will be taken care of in the event of death or infection?

WHEN RESIDENTS in communities far and wide continue to complain about the slow pace of the government to pick up dead bodies from the street and respond to suspected cases, it speaks volumes and it is time for the international players to step in.

WHEN A GOVERNMENT has failed to dispute several international media reports Friday, quoting the government’s claim that it has spent $US12 million dollars between April and June on fighting Ebola, it is time for international players to step in.

SORRY FOR OUR EXPRESSION, but there is no way in hell, that any government has spent that much money on this crisis when people are still angry, when bodies are lying on the streets, when Ebola call centers are ill-equipped with simple necessities as a generator to keep the lights burning and when a volunteer nurse has to set up his own isolation center because the government has turned its back on his community.

JUDGING FROM what happened in Monrovia last week, self-seeking presidential aides and kitchen Cabinet officials will shortly conclude and run to the President to say that this is a call for an interim government. IT IS NOT!!!. This is an honest appeal to international humanitarian groups and the WHO to move in and for the president to dissolve her "Special Ebola Task Force because they have all failed and appear incapable of solving this plague killing our people and flirting with anarchy.

THE STATE OF EMERGENCY is in play but is far from working because priorities are twisted and Liberia just doesn’t get it when every neighbor around it has, even after so many deaths, isolation and our backs against the wall.

AS HENRIQUE CAINE, a businessman and commentator aptly surmised on his Facebook page Sunday: “If a real and true state of emergency was being implemented with the full weight of the national security apparatus, the crap that happened in the slums of West Point on Bushrod Island would not be happening. Period!!!. I still believe we are taking this thing for play-play on all levels, so why the heck do we expect poverty stricken slum dwellers to behave any differently.”

THIS IS NOT a Brad Pitt fighting zombies in the movie, World War Z; or Morgan Freeman and Dustin Freeman on opposing sides of a deadly plague in Outbreak; or even Matt Damon fighting to save his family and the world in the Ebola-like Contagion movie. This is Liberia on the verge of extinction, if the world sits idly by and wait for this Liberian government, which has been given all the goodwill and international aid, to get it right. A Hint to the Wise!!!


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ebola; liberia
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1 posted on 08/17/2014 12:01:49 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: All
Nigeria: Ebola Nurse Flees Lagos for Enugu

One of the primary contacts of the late American-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, who escaped quarantine on suspicion of having the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, in Lagos, has been tracked to Enugu.

The suspect, identified as a nurse, said to have travelled to her home town to visit her family, is now under surveillance with 20 others she came into contact with in the city.

With the development, the total number of Nigerians under monitoring for the dreaded virus is now 198.

Revealing these facts yesterday after the Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja, Information Minister, Labaran Maku, explained that Nigeria currently has 10 confirmed cases of Ebola, all stemming from the visit of the late Sawyer.

Maku explained that of the 198 persons under surveillance, 177 of them are in Lagos while 21 are in Enugu.

He said: "All those who had primary contact have been quarantined. Secondary contacts have also been traced. So far, the number of people that have been traced is 198....

http://allafrica.com/stories/201408140297.html

2 posted on 08/17/2014 12:08:46 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: Smokin' Joe

Ping


3 posted on 08/17/2014 12:09:34 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: BlatherNaut; neverdem; ProtectOurFreedom; Mother Abigail; EBH; vetvetdoug; Smokin' Joe; ...
Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

4 posted on 08/17/2014 12:09:53 PM PDT by null and void (If Bill Clinton was the first black president, why isn't Barack Obama the first woman president?)
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Where Would You Go Without FR.......


Click The Pic To Donate

Support FR, Donate

5 posted on 08/17/2014 12:11:09 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (The Fed Gov is not one ring to rule them all)
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To: null and void

EEEEE-bolla!


6 posted on 08/17/2014 12:22:37 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: BlatherNaut; Smokin' Joe; null and void; Black Agnes

Don’t know how far that editorial was diseminated but the widespread disatisfaction with the government grows by the day. Might be a reason for shutting down one of Monrovia’s papers, with more news suppression to come.

National Chronicle Shut Down

http://m.allafrica.com/stories/201408151542.html/?secid=10052

15 August 2014 , Source: Inquirer

The office of the National Chronicle newspaper was yesterday shut down by some officers of the Liberia National Police who stormed the paper’s offices on Carey Street.

However, it is not clear whether the police acted on a court’s order, or was an action in line with the State of Emergency declared recently by President Sirleaf to combat the Ebola Virus.

Late yesterday evening, several police officers went to the offices of the newspaper and ordered its closure. The presence of the officers caused fear, causing many businesses on the streets to close down their operations.

Also, the news of the police of about 100 police officers on the street was received differently in the Duala area, as people ran helter-skelter, when it was rumored in that area that there was shooting “in town” by security officers.

Earlier, it was learned that the officers went to the paper’s office to arrest its Managing Editor and publisher Philibert Brown. However, his office was closed, without Mr. Brown, being arrested.

Journalists from several media institutions thronged on the scene to know what was happening to their colleagues at the Chronicle though some were prevented by police from getting on the scene of the action.

Following hours of commotion, the president of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) Abdullah Kamara informed anxious journalists that he had just spoken to Police Director, Chris Massaquoi who said he knew nothing about the police operation on Carey Street.

Later Mr. Brown emerged from his office and said he was a free man but his institution has been shut down by Government. He said police used tear gas to break into the offices of the Chronicle and demanded that the paper be shut down.

However, Brown was taken away from the scene by angry crowd who chanted anti-government slogans in support of the Liberian media.

No reason was given up to press time, but the closure of the paper comes days after some publications in the paper. One of which was a story that Vice President Joseph Boakai dumped President Sirleaf when he met U.S. President Obama recently in the United States where the Vice President represented President Sirleaf at the African Forum.

Meanwhile, the Vice President’s office has denied the story.


7 posted on 08/17/2014 12:46:36 PM PDT by Covenantor ("Men are ruled...by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern." Chesterton)
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To: BlatherNaut

The bottom line here is that the die is cast. The public have stormed Ebola hospitals to carry off infected family members and trash the place, some claiming that there is no such thing as Ebola, and others looting contaminated, bloodstained linens, mattresses and equipment.

People who do this cannot be saved by outsiders with good intent. Until enough of them have died to pound it into their fool heads that this is a *plague*, they will have to suffer.


8 posted on 08/17/2014 12:52:28 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy ("Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative." -Obama, 09-24-11)
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To: BlatherNaut

If I’m looking for help, I’m probably not going to make my first appeal to an anti-Christian, population control outfit like WHO.


9 posted on 08/17/2014 1:16:08 PM PDT by G Larry (Which of Obama's policies do you think I'd support if he were white?)
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To: BlatherNaut

Yeah....you go first.....

No, after you.

No...by all means, after you.

I would not have it. You first...

And so on, and so on.


10 posted on 08/17/2014 1:31:07 PM PDT by Vermont Lt (If you want to keep your dignity, you can keep it. Period........ Just kidding, you can't keep it.)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

But first, let me kiss my dead uncle with an open mouth. There ya go...

There are a few common sense reasons why the US will not have a horrible outbreak. First is that we generally listen when we are told to go to the hospital. Second, hardly anyone takes care of their sick at home. Thirdly, we are generally reluctant to do anything with our dead bodies.

Now, it doesn’t mean we won’t get whacked. But I was telling my kids that if they are deemed to have Ebola, there is a spot in the shed out back. I will stick in a hose for them to scrub up with when they get better.


11 posted on 08/17/2014 1:34:25 PM PDT by Vermont Lt (If you want to keep your dignity, you can keep it. Period........ Just kidding, you can't keep it.)
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To: BlatherNaut

“please intervene in Liberia before Africa’s oldest republic loses its entire population.”

Obama and the tards want Liberia totally extinguished
because that is where all the blacks were to be sent
after the civil war.


12 posted on 08/17/2014 1:49:03 PM PDT by Slambat
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To: 2ndreconmarine; Fitzcarraldo; Covenantor; Mother Abigail; EBH; Dog Gone; ...
Ping...

A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread

13 posted on 08/17/2014 2:14:04 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Vermont Lt
There are a few common sense reasons why the US will not have a horrible outbreak. First is that we generally listen when we are told to go to the hospital. Second, hardly anyone takes care of their sick at home. Thirdly, we are generally reluctant to do anything with our dead bodies.

Then ask yourself how Patric Sawyer infected 10 people. He was someone familiar with our way of doing things and no relatives or friends around to do anything with his dead body (thank God).

Someone had a chart of a few deadly diseases and how many people one person usually infects and this is off the charts compared to some of the others with very deadly reputations. Some common sense tells you they are not telling us the whole truth about how easily this thing spreads...these were just the people in Nigeria not those he had contact with before leaving the first country. One of those 10 was given Ebola by a nurse not presenting symptoms that had worked on Sawyer.

This thing is a lot scarier than the press is reporting.

14 posted on 08/17/2014 2:15:40 PM PDT by Lady Heron
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To: Vermont Lt

When you say we, does that include the Middle East immigrants, the Somalis in Maine, Mexican and Central Americans, Eithiopians, and so on?

There’s a huge amount of them that have not and refuse to assimilate. They retain all their customs, perhaps even more tightly than when in their homeland.

As to sanitation practices, well enough has been said on this board about the lack of them. Re-read the Census Bureau stats while thinking about Ebola.

And then there’s the almost invisible army that serves in the McMansions, Upper East and West Side condo, California estates, etc. The Guatamalan nanny, Honduran gardener, etc, etc. You think they have suddenly acquired the habits of the English servant class of days gone by?

How many have recently arrived relatives? They don’t exactly advertise do they?

We’re only a few secret visitors away from the potential spread through every strata of society in some fashion or other.

I’m not tin foil hat conspiracy guy, but I do take a close look at our perimeter denfenses and they are abysmally porous. By design.

Not addressed to you, but our smug complacency is no different than that of the West African ruling classes.


15 posted on 08/17/2014 3:12:43 PM PDT by Covenantor ("Men are ruled...by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern." Chesterton)
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To: BlatherNaut

As long as muzzies aren’t dying in masses all is good...... zero and his ilk are content with the conquering of Africa..... by any means.....


16 posted on 08/17/2014 3:19:49 PM PDT by Hogblog
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To: Covenantor
the closure of the paper comes days after some publications in the paper. One of which was a story that Vice President Joseph Boakai dumped President Sirleaf when he met U.S. President Obama recently in the United States where the Vice President represented President Sirleaf at the African Forum.

Obola, the gift that keeps on giving.

You know Val is taking notes and adding this to her how-to chapter on shutting down the msm. It's the chapter right after shutting down the internet in the Destroy America play book.

17 posted on 08/17/2014 3:24:54 PM PDT by bgill
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To: Covenantor

Good enough points. But if people start dropping, I doubt if the hospitals will be raided by people claiming there is no Ebola, just malaria.

I know in my middle class, suburban area, we will shut ourselves off from the rest of the world PDQ. Ebola is not difficult to contain if you are aware.


18 posted on 08/17/2014 3:28:45 PM PDT by Vermont Lt (If you want to keep your dignity, you can keep it. Period........ Just kidding, you can't keep it.)
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To: Covenantor

There are reports of the unaccompanied children and women/children camps where they don’t know about indoor flush toilets.


19 posted on 08/17/2014 3:29:07 PM PDT by bgill
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To: Vermont Lt; a fool in paradise

DOOMAGE!!!


20 posted on 08/17/2014 3:29:27 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans)
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