A former government minister in Sierra Leone, Tuesday said he has lost
nine members of his family to the Ebola epidemic raging in West
Africa.
Lansana Nyallah told state television that the dead included his
brothers and sisters in the eastern village of Daru, at the epicentre
of the outbreak.
"To those who still believe that Ebola does not exist, please take
heed," the former youth and education minister told the Sierra Leone
Broadcasting Corporation.
"Nine members of my family including my brothers and sisters are now
dead from the virus," said Nyallah, who was replaced in a cabinet
reshuffle last year after several years in President Ernest Bai
Koroma's government.
"One of them was an Imam who was also a radio journalist working for a
community radio station in Daru," he said. "Our house is now empty as
no one lives there," he added.
Ebola has claimed 273 lives in Sierra Leone. Overall almost 900 people
have been killed by the virus. Most of those infected in Sierra Leone
are those, who have ignored warnings not to touch the bodies of the
dead during funeral rituals.
Many indigenous people living in the forested border areas that
straddle Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea believe the virus was
introduced deliberately by outsiders, while others say it is a
fictional invention by the West, designed to subjugate them.
"The confusion about Ebola which created the resistance from some
people was due to the earlier messages which were both confusing and
unreliable," Nyallah told the station.
"We were told that Ebola had no cure but were not told about the
chances of survival if one reports early. We have now learnt more
about the disease, especially about the body-to-body contact which
increases transmission," he added.
Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency last week, quarantining
Ebola-hit areas and cancelling foreign trips by ministers. The country
observed a "stay at home day" on Monday as the government recalibrated
its response to the outbreak.
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