By Joseph Lamin Kamara
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has sent in food aid to tens of thousands of people infected with or affected by the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.
According to the Country Representative of the agency, Gon Myers they are providing "full ration including cereal, vegetable oil, super cereal plus - that is the corn-soya blend feeding people with nutritional difficulties".
He said they had intended to feed 28,600 but were currently supporting 35,000.
Myers told Politico that they were targetting "400,000 people affected by the disease" but that they were focusing more on Kailahun and Kenema, the two districts currently quarantined.
He said there were no markets in those areas which had affected foot supplies there "greatly".
The current supplies he said would last for supplies for six weeks with the hope that they would be replenished.
Myers told a joint Government and UN family press conference that 200 people had been quarantined in Lunsar whom he said they were feeding.
“There is urgent need for food in areas that have been quarantined for Ebola containment process where food production has been interrupted,” he said.
Myers was speaking as the UN launched a supplemental budget appeal for US$ 18 million for Sierra Leone to help deal with the Ebola outbreak.
Speaking at the WHO office in Freetown UN Resident Coordinator, David McLachlan-Karr, said: “This appeal is to fill in some gaps in the initial national response appeal of $26 million that was launched by the Sierra Leone Government in July.”
He said there were emerging gaps in the national plan in the fight against Ebola which necessitated the supplementary funding appeal. He stated that the funding would target “clinical management and coordination through WFP, social mobilisation and awareness-raising through UNICEF, surveillance and contact-tracing of persons who may have come in contact with Ebola through UNFPA, and providing logistical support through WFP.”
McLachlan-Karr added that an additional appeal by WFP and FAO was “in the pipeline for more US$ 60 million to assist the government with emergency feeding and logistics.”
The WHO country representative, Jacob Mufunda said experts from South Africa had already arrived to establish mobile laboratories.
The UNFPA representative at the meeting, Dr. Bannet Ndyanabangi said his organisation was adding 815 more contact tracers to ensure that “by the end of the month each district [in the country] has 100 contact tracers.”
Figures from the coordinator’s office showed a cumulative total of more than 800 Ebola cases and 350 deaths, as of Monday 18 August, 2014.
(C) Politico 19/08/14
