Somali government to take precautionary measures to minimize the risk of Ebola

The Federal government of Somalia announced that it’s putting plans to take measures and special precautions to prevent the spread of the Ebola outbreak.

Director of the ministry of health Dr. Yasiin Noor Bile said, after the outbreak of Ebola in many African countries, the Federal government is worried about flights coming from the affected countries to Somalia, raising the government’s concern over the epidemic, and stating that they will start putting in place stringent measures to prevent Ebola from entering the country.

For instance, the neighboring Kenya, closed its borders to travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries worst hit by the Ebola outbreak, the government has last week announced.

So far the Ebola outbreak has been concentrated in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which warned that the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that “extraordinary measures” were needed to contain the disease.

No cases of Ebola have been reported in Kenya or Somalia, but the countries are at particular risk for an outbreak of the disease due to frequent transcontinental flights into Nairobi, and Sierra Leone being one of AMISOM’s troop contributing countries.

Considering Somalia’s poor healthcare infrastructure, an outbreak of Ebola could have catastrophic consequences in the country, given that there is no vaccine against the Ebola virus and there is no known cure for treating the disease.

The African Peace-keeping mission in Somalia AMISOM had on July decided to delay the deployment of the troops that would have come from Sierra Leone to replace the troops that have been in the country for a year.