The Filipino security forces, who have just returned from Ebola-stricken Liberia, remained healthy and active even as the World Health Organization announced that the outbreak had topped 5,000 deaths from around 14,000 since December last year.
But Navy Captain Luzviminda Camacho, commander of Task Group Liberia, said Thursday the 133 United Nations peace keepers, who are now under quarantine on Caballo Island at the mouth of Manila Bay, have begun to undergo 21-day medical monitoring for symptoms of Ebola.
Camacho said the peacekeepers, who were declared Ebola-free before they left Liberia, are confined to an isolation area that is guarded by 50 soldiers.
“[They guards] are stationed some 500 meters from the isolation area,” Camacho said, a day after the arrival of the peacekeepers, comprised of 108 soldiers, 24 policemen and a jail officer.
Camacho said they are being monitored by a medical team who are also required to wear personal protective equipment every time they enter the isolation area to check on the peacekeepers who are mainly left alone.
“The peacekeepers are the ones cooking their food,” Camacho said, noting that there is limited contact with anyone who leaves the island.
But while the peacekeepers are subject to a routine similar to troops deployed on operation, they are also allowed some rest and recreation after their nine-month tour of duty as UN peacekeepers in Liberia.
“Like for example, every morning they wake early. They have a public address system at 6 o’clock every morning and evening where the medical team will be taking their temperature checkup. Then there will be accounting of personnel,” she said.
“At 7 o’clock is messing. The routine is the same like soldiers deployed in operations. They have a lot sports activities,” Camacho said, reiterating that the peacekeepers had already been declared Ebola-free before leaving Monrovia in Liberia.
In Liberia itself, there has been a drop in new cases from a daily peak of more than 500 in September to around 50, but cases are “still skyrocketing” in western Sierra Leone, according to the WHO.
In Mali, the latest country to see infections, the clinic where an imam died of Ebola has been quarantined, with around 30 people trapped inside including medical staff, patients and 15 African soldiers from the United Nations mission in Mali.
The WHO said the outbreak – almost entirely confined to west Africa – had passed a gruesome landmark, with 5,160 deaths from around 14,000 cases since Ebola emerged in Guinea in December.
The WHO and aid organizations have frequently pointed out that the real count of cases and deaths could be much higher.
The WHO said the 70-year-old cleric in Mali, named as Goika Sekou from a village on Guinea’s porous border with Mali, fell sick and was transferred via several treatment centres to the Pasteur clinic.
Multiple lab tests were performed, the WHO said, but crucially not for Ebola, and he died of kidney failure on Oct. 27.
He had travelled to Bamako by car with four family members — all of whom have since got sick or died at home in Guinea.
The imam’s body was transported to a mosque in Bamako for a ritual washing ceremony before being returned to Guinea for burial.
Traditional African funeral rites are considered one of the main causes of Ebola spreading, as it is transmitted through bodily fluids and those who have recently died are particularly infectious. (Manila Standard, Florante S. Solmerin, AFP)