Lockdown was 'a success'

Officials said more than a million households were checked for Ebola patients and given information on the disease. DW spoke to Abdulai Bayraytay, a spokesman for the government of Sierra Leone.

DW: The government is claiming the lockdown was a success. How do you define success under these circumstances?

Abdulai Bayraytay: Well, we were able to have specific benchmarks we were looking for prior to the three day stay at home from September 19 to September 21. The objective was to go and gauge how much knowledge people get about the Ebola, as well as to provide them with very clustered information, so that all of them at the community level, will be able to understand the measures we put in place, [for instance] reporting their loved ones when they get sick early, that way we give them the supportive treatment. Within those three days we were able to get people who called the 117 toll free number, we received over 2,000 calls. It became overwhelming and of that, people who have been keeping their loved ones at home without reporting them, this time around they were able to call the burial team. Within three days we were able to get about 77 corpses buried just in the western area of the country.

How many new cases of Ebola were you able to discover?

We were able to discover over 124 new cases. These are people who voluntarily came out after the president addressed the nation on September 18, telling people that they would not be penalized because they have Ebola, we will not stigmatize them and that they need to have confidence in the health system. So voluntarily, in a place called Moyamba in the southern part of the country, 17 people first came out and the way the professional health workers treated them, it gave the impetus for other areas to follow suite. So over all, after they were tested, we were able to get over 50 new cases across the country as well. This helps us now to do the contact rating. We want the community to take ownership in this fight against Ebola.

Even though this is a national medical emergency, confining people to their homes is still an infringement of civil liberties. How worried are you that such measures could erode trust between the government and the population?

Well, that was why for the past two weeks, prior to [the lockdown], we went around the country, informing the people, explaining to them the rationale. I must indicate here that we were able to get one hundred percent compliance. People have been calling for an extension [of lockdown] because they say, the fact that people have even reported new cases, it means that the government and the health personnel are in the right path towards the eradication of Ebola. But for now I can tell you, the security personnel had no incidence all over the country because everybody complied with no incidence at all.

But a team burying bodies in Freetown was attacked by youths on Saturday. Doesn't that give you cause for concern?

It was a cause for concern because according to the doctor in charge, the reason for that was, when they called the 117 ... and the burial team came late to collect the corps, they thought it was their fault. But we cannot just collect the corps until after the swab has been confirmed in the laboratory that indeed it is either Ebola positive or not. There is a press statement to the effect that nobody should bury their loved ones without having a medical confirmation. So when the burial team shows up a little bit late after they would have gotten the result, there is always anxiety. But we have treated that to be an isolated incidence because all over the country the communities complied with the burial team and we had no incidence apart from that one

Is Sierra Leone starting to get from the international community the medical staff and resources it needs to defer with this outbreak or is everything still in short supply?

Yesterday we were able to receive medical aid direct from the United States, six million worth of various supply meant for Serial Leone and Liberia. Our government was also able to receive our own consignment from the US, which included protective gloves, mask and the likes. These are medical supplies but right now based on this three day stay at home, one of the immediate challenges that came out very clearly is that we needed more ambulances. The government just purchased sixteen ambulances from its own resources couple of weeks ago which we deployed all over the country. But we became very much overwhelmed, we needed more vehicles, we need logistics apart from the human personnel which is in dire need as well.

Abdulai Bayraytay is a spokesman for the government of Sierra Leone.

Interview: Mark Caldwell