The rising number of infected patients and casualties of the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone has moved the national government to declare a state of emergency. According to a Reuters report, the government has already called in its troops to quarantine the areas that post the highest number of Ebola infection on Thursday. Sierra Leone has now joined Liberia in employing more stringent initiatives in the hopes of curbing the worst virus outbreak in history.
A state of emergency is called when the government needs to make changes to its executive, legislative and/or judiciary functions in order to quickly address a national problem like the Ebola infection. This also allows the government to mobilize its agencies to implement its emergency measures to aid the government in resolving a national concern.
It could be recalled that the virus has already claimed the life of a US national who had been a government minister in Liberia. It has already infected two American humanitarian aid workers in Sierra Leone, but the two have remained in the country due to concerns of potential infection to spread outside of West Africa. The World Health Organization has also blamed the virus for killing 672 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The virus has already spread to Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, and authorities have reported that it had already claimed the life of one man on Friday.
Reuters quoted Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma, who has already cancelled a planned visit to Washington DC for a US-Africa summit in order to meet with the leaders of the other affected countries in Conakry on Friday. He said in a speech on Wednesday, "Sierra Leone is in a great fight ... Failure is not an option. Extraordinary challenges require extraordinary measures."
Koroma has said in the same speech that the state of emergency would last between 60 and 90 days. Aside from the quarantine, he is also expecting that police will provide support to NGOs and health officers to continue with their work without any hindrance. Moreover, Koroma added that there would be house-to-house searches done to trace other Ebola victims and the disease's ground zeros in order for medical teams to clear the area of the virus.
