West Africa Disaster Preparedness Initiative (WADPI)

Three diplomats and Head of Mission in Sierra Leone;  the European Union (EU), US Embassy and World Bank have in a joint press conference, called on government to improve the fisheries sector in the country.

Briefing journalists, Parminder Brar, Country Manager of the World Bank in Sierra Leone, highlighted issues on the joint press release, disclosing that the three have been involved in fisheries sector as it is the greatest renewable natural resources of the county which needs to be protected.  “As per our assessment, the overall unsustainable basis for the value of the fishery sector of Sierra Leone can be $186 million dollars a year and right now the revenue that government is getting from fisheries is $6m,” he pointed out.

The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRCSL) yesterday organized a round table engagement in their conference room on the acute shortage of water supply in Freetown and other parts of the country.

As the Freetown City Council together with the Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone on Tuesday 17th May engaged stakeholders on the problem of drugs peddling, the Mayor of the Municipality of Freetown has declared that the council will no longer collect dues from drug peddlers.
He made this declaration while he was responding to a presentation by Wilshire Johnson, Registrar of the

Pharmacy Board on the current state of drug peddling. The presentation was done at the council’s conference hall in the presence of representatives from the traders union, police, National Revenue Authority, the FCC, Minister of Health and Sanitation, the board, among others.

Non-invasive contact with Ebola survivors 6 weeks after the virus has been cleared poses little risk for healthcare workers, though contact with semen, ocular humor, and cerebrospinal fluid requires Ebola-appropriate precautions, according to a study yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

A cross-sectional cohort study evaluated 555 specimens from 112 Ebola survivors without fever seeking follow-up care at a clinic in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from Apr 2 to Jun 16, 2015. Almost one third of survivors (34, or 30%) were under the age of 16, and 50 (40%) were male.

Samples were obtained from the armpit (103 specimens), blood (93), conjunctiva (92), forehead (54), mouth (105), rectum (17), semen (1), urine (69), and vagina (21). The median time from Ebola treatment unit discharge to specimen collection was 142 days.