In a statement copied to citifmonline.com, GAF said publications by the Daily Post Newspaper that suggested that troops were being paid $31.00 per day, instead of the promised $35.00 were false.

[contextly_sidebar id=”tcJ185BzKBFv2qyC2wJJg1hRxUupGOru”]The newspaper earlier this week reported that, contrary to the government’s promise of paying the troops $35.00, it was paying the troops less.

The Armed Forces said the publication was in bad taste, and was with the intention of downplaying the efforts of the government in promoting the welfare of troops.

The statement, which was signed by Director of Public Relations, Co. E. Aggrey-Quarshie, maintained that the soldiers were being paid the promised $35.00 per day, and there was no intention of reducing the amount.

Nana Addo announces increase in peacekeepers’ allowances

President Nana Akufo-Addo, in March 2017, announced an increase in peacekeeping allowances from $31 to $35, which took retrospective effect from January 2017.

He made the announcement when he addressed an end-of-year get-together of the Ghana Armed Forces (WASSA).

NPP to review Army retirement age upwards

The New Patriotic Party (NPP), while in opposition announced plans to review the period before retirement for recruits, popularly referred to as “other ranks” in the Ghana Armed Forces, should they return to office after the December elections.

Currently, the recruits retire after 25 years, but the NPP believes a review is needed to give them more opportunities in the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).

The Chairman of the party’s sub-committee on Defense and Interior at the time,  and MP for Bimbila, Dominic Nitiwul, who’s now the Defense Minister, had indicated the NPP’s intent to extend the period before retirement by five years.

Read the full statement below:

FALSE SPECULATION ON PEACEKEEPING ALLOWANCE OF TROOPS

The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has noted with concern a false publication in the Daily Post Newspaper on 12 October 2017 claiming that troops on UN peacekeeping operations are being paid $31.00 instead of the $35.00 promised by Government. GAF wishes to state categorically that this information is totally false and without any iota of truth. It is hereby reiterated that the approved rate of payment remains $35.00 per soldier per day without any intention of reducing it.

The negative comments being circulated with the intention of downplaying the efforts of Government in promoting troops welfare is considered to be in bad taste and the general public is hereby advised to disregard it.

SIGNED

E AGGREY-QUASHIE

Colonel

Director Public Relations

–

By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The outbreak, which was first discovered in March, has now killed more than 2,400 people mostly in Liberia, neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, as understaffed and poorly resourced West African healthcare systems have been overrun.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where more than half of the deaths have been recorded. It has said that thousands are at risk of contagion in the coming weeks.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has set up several treatment centres in the affected countries but has also repeatedly warned it has reached the limits of its capacity and appealed for foreign governments to intervene.

In a letter dated September 9 seen by Reuters, Johnson Sirleaf appealed to Obama to build and operate at least one Ebola treatment unit in the capital Monrovia, saying that U.S. civilian and military teams had experience in dealing with biological hazards.

With the Liberian government due to open a 100-bed treatment centre and MSF scaling up its Ebola facility in Monrovia to 400 beds, Johnson Sirleaf said there was still a shortfall of 1,000 beds in the capital as well as a need for 10 new centres in the rest of the country.

“Without more direct help from your government, we will lose this battle against Ebola,” Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on women’s rights, wrote to Obama.

The U.S. government has committed around $100 million to tackle the outbreak by providing protective equipment for healthcare workers, food, water, medical and hygiene equipment.

The U.S. military said this week it would build a 25-bed field hospital in Liberia to care for infected health workers but it would hand this to Liberians to run.

On Friday, the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah Malac said Washington would train security forces in isolation operations, after a boy was shot dead last month when Liberian soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting at a quarantine in a Monrovia neighbourhood.

WORST THREAT SINCE CIVIL WAR

Liberian officials have called the outbreak the greatest threat to national stability since a 1989-2003 civil war, which killed nearly 250,000 people. Many ordinary people in Liberia, a nation founded by descendants of freed American slaves, look for help to the United States.

Cuba on Friday announced that it would deploy 165 medical personnel to Sierra Leone next month, the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses committed so far.

Johnson Sirleaf said that Ebola treatment centres were full and were being forced to turn away the sick.

“We are sending them home where they are a risk to their families and the communities. I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us,” she wrote.

“Only governments like yours have the resources and assets to deploy at the pace required to arrest the spread,” Johnson Sirleaf wrote to Obama, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

In a country with large numbers of unemployed former child soldiers, Johnson Sirleaf said the outbreak threatened civil order. With healthcare workers staying away from work, after dozens of their colleagues contracted the virus, citizens were also dying of other, treatable illnesses, she said.

Johnson Sirleaf asked the United States to assist in restoring services in at least 10 non-Ebola hospitals. Liberia also asked for U.S. help in establishing an air bridge to transport personnel and equipment after all but two private airlines have cancelled their flights.

–

Source: Reuters

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Ebola is spreading exponentially in Liberia, with thousands of new cases expected in the next three weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

Conventional methods to control the outbreak were “not having an adequate impact”, the UN’s health agency added.

At least 2,100 people infected with Ebola have died in the West African states of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria this year.

The WHO says 79 health workers have been killed by the virus.

[contextly_sidebar id=”uUAj2oomKqwPOMEDRF6EJxNwSRlhdZXc”]Organisations combating the outbreak needed to scale-up efforts “three-to-four fold”, the WHO said.

It highlighted Liberia’s Montserrado county, where 1,000 beds were needed for infected Ebola patients but only 240 were available, leading to people being turned away from treatment centres.

Transmission of the virus in Liberia was “already intense”, and taxis being used to transport infected patients appeared to be “a hot source of potential virus transmission”, the WHO said.

Ebola casualties

Up to 5 September

“When patients are turned away… they have no choice but to return to their communities and homes, where they inevitably infect others.”

The Ebola disease spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or indirectly through contact with contaminated environments.

The current outbreak has mortality rate of about 55%.

Liberia has the highest number of reported cases and deaths, with more than 1,000 casualties so far.

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Obama told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the outbreak, which has killed 2,100 people in African five countries, was unlikely to spread to the United States in the short term.

But he added there could be implications if Washington and other powers did not send urgently needed equipment, public health workers and other supplies to the region.

“If we don’t make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa but other parts of the world, there’s the prospect then that the virus mutates. It becomes more easily transmittable,” he said in the interview broadcast on Sunday.

“And then it could be a serious danger to the United States,” he added.

The United Nations said last week $600 million in supplies were needed.

“We’re going to have to get U.S. military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there, to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world,” Obama said in the interview.

“If we do that, then it’s still going to be months before this problem is controllable in Africa,” he said.

The outbreak that was first identified in Guinea in March has since spread across much of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases have also been registered in Nigeria and Senegal. There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments.

–

Source: Reuters.com

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The pace of the infection has accelerated, and there were close to 400 deaths in the past week, officials said on Wednesday. It was first detected deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea in March.

The hemorrhagic fever has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, and Senegal, and has killed more people than all outbreaks since Ebola was first uncovered in 1976. There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments.

An experimental Ebola vaccine that Canada said it would give to the World Health Organization for use in Africa was as of Wednesday still in the lab that developed it as officials are puzzled over how to transport it.

Ottawa said on Aug. 12 that it would donate between 800 and 1,000 doses of the vaccine, being held at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

“We are now working with the WHO to address complex regulatory, logistical and ethical issues so that the vaccine can be safely and ethically deployed as rapidly as possible,” Health Canada spokesman Sean Upton said in a statement.

“For example, the logistics surrounding the safe delivery of the vaccine are complicated.” Upton said one of the challenges was keeping the vaccine cool enough to remain potent.

Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics Corp.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday a federal contract worth up to $42.3 million would help accelerate testing of an experimental Ebola virus treatment being developed by privately held Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.

Dr. David Nabarro, senior U.N. Coordinator for Ebola, said the cost of getting the supplies needed by West Africa countries to control the crisis would amount to $600 million. That was higher than an estimate of $490 million by the WHO last week.

Moving workers and supplies around the region has been made difficult by restrictions by some countries on air travel and landing rights as they try to control Ebola’s spread.

“We are working intensively with those governments to encourage them to commit to the movement of people and planes and at the same time deal with anxieties about the possibility of infection,” Nabarro said.

He said the president of Ghana has agreed to allow an airbridge, or route, through the country to affected regions to move people and supplies.

Ivory Coast, which closed its borders with Liberia and Guinea last month, said on Tuesday it would open humanitarian and economic corridors to its two western neighbors.

EPIDEMIC GAINS, EVACUATION EYED FOR DOCTOR

Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) told a press conference in Washington, “This Ebola epidemic is the longest, the most severe and the most complex we’ve ever seen.”

Chan said there were more than 3,500 cases across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In Liberia, Dr. Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician infected with Ebola could be medically evacuated as soon as Thursday, according to staff at the hospital where he worked. Two other Americans recovered from the virus after being taken to the United States for treatment last month.

Amid shortages of equipment and trained staff, more than 120 healthcare workers have died in West Africa in the Ebola outbreak. The Liberian government has begun offering a $1,000 bonus to any healthcare workers who agreed to work in Ebola treatment facilities.

Guinea, the first country to detect the virus, previously said it was containing the outbreak but announced that nine new cases had been found in the prefecture of Kerouane, some 750 km (470 miles) southeast of the capital Conakry.

“There has been a new outbreak in Kerouane, but we have sent in a team to contain it,” said Aboubacar Sikidi Diakité, head of Guinea’s Ebola task force.

The latest outbreak started after the arrival of an infected person from neighboring Liberia, and a total of 18 people were under observation in the region, the health ministry said.

Guinea has recorded 489 deaths and 749 Ebola cases as of Sept. 1, and the epicenter of the outbreak has shifted to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Guinean President Alpha Conde urged healthcare personnel to intensify efforts to avoid new infections. The disease is spread by physical contact with body fluids of infected people or contaminated articles, such as needles.

“Even for a simple malaria (case), you have to protect yourselves before consulting any sick person until the end of this epidemic,” Conde said in a televised broadcast. “We had started to succeed, but you dropped the ball and here we go again.”

The haemorrhagic fever was gaining in Nigeria where 18 cases, including 7 deaths, have been reported, three in the oil hub of Port Harcourt. The WHO warned that the outbreak there “has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos” as containment measures had been less effective.

The fifth country infected was Senegal, which confirmed its first case last week: a student who slipped across the border from Guinea and made his way to the coastal capital Dakar.

More than 50 cases of Ebola have been reported in a remote northern jungle region of Democratic Republic of Congo, although these are not linked to the West African cases.

Since Ebola was first detected in Congo in 1976, WHO has reported more than 20 outbreaks in Africa and 1,590 victims.

The WHO warned last week that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa could infect more than 20,000 people and spread to 10 countries.

WORRIES VIRUS COULD MUTATE

Dr. Thomas Kenyon, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Centre for Global Health, said on Wednesday the outbreak was “spiraling out of control” and warned that the window of opportunity for controlling it was closing.

“Guinea did show that with action, they brought it partially under control. But unfortunately it is back on the increase now,” he told a conference call. “It’s not under control anywhere.”

He warned that the longer the outbreak went uncontained, the greater the possibility the virus could mutate, making it more difficult to contain. While Ebola is transmitted in humans by contact with bodily fluids of the sick, suspected cases of airborne infection have been reported in monkeys in laboratories.

A senior U.S. official rebutted a call from global aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) for wealthy nations to deploy specialized biological disaster response teams to the region. MSF on Tuesday had warned that 800 more beds for Ebola patients were urgently needed in the Liberian capital Monrovia alone.

“I don’t think at this point deploying biological incident response teams is exactly what’s needed,” said Gayle Smith, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council.

She said the U.S. government was focusing on rapidly increasing the number of Ebola treatment centers in affected countries, providing protective equipment, and training local staff. “We will see a considerable ramp-up in the coming days and weeks. If we find it is still moving out of control, we will look at other options,” Smith told a conference call.

–

Source: Reuters

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Concerns have been raised by numerous organizations about the quality of health care received by affected patients in West Africa as several health practitioners have themselves contracted the disease.

An infectious disease specialist at Emory University Hospital, Dr. Bruce S. Ribner said they will assist their West African colleagues in dealing with the Ebola epidemic.

“The major thing is that they [West African] suffer a substantial lack of infrastructure,” hence, the decision to help.

Two American medical officers after contracting the Ebola virus in Liberia were flown back to the USA for treatment.

They were discharged on Friday after recovering from the disease.

According to Dr. Ribner, while treating the two patients, they “learnt a number of things in terms of caring for the patients and fluid and electrolyte replacement, which frankly, our colleagues in Africa don’t have the capability to detect.”

He revealed that they are in the process of developing “several guidelines” which they believe would help the doctors in Africa deal effectively with the disease.

The Ebola disease has so far claimed over 1,200 lives in four West African countries; Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.

An untested drug has been sent to Liberia to treat infected patients.

By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Residents of the capital’s West Point slum area say the barbed wire blockade stops them buying food and working.

Four people are said to have been injured in the clashes.

Liberia has seen the most deaths – 576 – in the world’s worst Ebola outbreak, which has hit West Africa this year.

A total of 1,350 have died in four countries – Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, as well as Liberia.

Some Liberians believe Ebola is a hoax, so the government is running public information campaigns

Hundreds of West Point residents protested on Wednesday after security forces erected blockades around the slum.

One 15-year-old boy was injured in West Point as he tried to cross the barbed-wire barricades erected by the security forces, who fired into the air to disperse the protesters.

“I don’t have any food and we’re scared,” West Point resident Alpha Barry told Reuters news agency.

The authorities said they had delivered some emergency food aid to the area on Wednesday.

Residents of other Monrovia districts said they were unhappy at not being able to buy food in West Point market.

“We go to West Point market to buy food for our children, and since this morning our children have not yet eaten,” Hawa Massally told AP.

West Point, Liberia’s largest slum, lies on the Atlantic Ocean

At the scene: Jonathan Paye-Layleh, BBC News, Monrovia

West Point is an informal settlement home to 50-100,000 people. The slum lacks almost everything required for livelihood and life has remained unchanged for the impoverished community for decades.

There are no public toilets in the whole township. The zinc shacks in which people reside are almost glued together, making it a health hazard and vulnerable to fire outbreaks. In the absence of regular toilet facilities, West Pointers (as residents proudly call themselves) use makeshift wooden toilets erected over the River Mesurado. The beach on the Atlantic coast is also used as a toilet.

Even though the township is situated close to mainland Monrovia and is densely populated, the only government school there is an elementary school; there is no high or secondary school and there is no assembly hall for residents to meet and discuss issues of common interest.

Analysts have long argued that residents should be moved out of the mosquito-infested township but even though the land they reside on belongs to the government, residents are often reluctant to be relocated.

Our reporter says fear and tension has been growing in the slum for days and residents feel not enough has been done to protect them.

But President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said people were not heeding government warnings.

“We have been unable to control the spread due to continued denials, cultural varying practices, disregard for the advice of health workers and disrespect for the warnings by the government,” she said on Tuesday evening.

Some people have dismissed the Ebola outbreak as a hoax, while others do not trust Western medicine, saying the disease is the result of witchcraft.

Fruit bats are believed to be a major carrier of the Ebola virus but do not show symptoms

• Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
• Fatality rate can reach 90% – but current outbreak has about 55%
• Incubation period is two to 21 days
• There is no vaccine or cure
• Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery
• Fruit bats, a delicacy for some West Africans, are considered to be virus’ natural host

West Point residents last weekend attacked a quarantine centre, looting mattresses and helping suspected Ebola patients to leave, potentially helping to spread the virus to other parts of the capital.

Dolo Town, about 40km (25 miles) from Monrovia, has also been put under quarantine and all entertainment centres are to be closed and video centres are to shut by 18:00 local time.

Forces from the police, army and fire service are being used to enforce the Ebola quarantine in Monrovia

Liberia is already under a state of emergency

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf also imposed a nationwide curfew.

There is no known cure for Ebola, but the WHO has ruled that untested drugs can be used to treat patients in light of the scale of the current outbreak.

The experimental drug ZMapp has been used to treat several people who contracted Ebola in Liberia but the US firm that makes the drug says it has for now run out of it, so the only way to stop the current outbreak is to isolate the victims.

–

Source: BBC

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Tertiary institutions across the country are to extend their re-opening dates again in the wake of the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in four West African countries.

Source: Graphic Online

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About 1,000 persons have died from the deadly disease so far.

Efforts have however been intensified to contain the disease in the four affected African countries; Nigeria, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service(GHS) are working assiduously  to prevent a possible outbreak of the disease in Ghana while the Education Ministry has also asked all tertiary institutions to postpone their re-opening date.

Some have however alleged that Ghanaian health officials are concealing the recorded cases of Ebola in the country.

But President Mahama dismissed the claims, describing them as “unacceptable”.

Speaking in Komenda in the Central region, President Mahama asked “well meaning” Ghanaians to speak-up against what he terms the irresponsible use of social media to spread such false information.

“Let me take this opportunity to condemn the irresponsible use of social media, it is becoming a factor that is absolutely unacceptable.

These panic messages that seek to sow fear in our people is totally unacceptable and I call on our traditional leaders and our religious leaders to preach against it,” the President said.

By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The government had sought to reassure people, saying all the patients had been moved to another health facility.

But Information Minister Lewis Brown told the BBC that 17 inmates had gone “back into their communities”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for exit screenings on all travellers from affected countries.

It wants checks at airports, sea ports and major land crossings.

More than 400 people are known to have died from the virus in Liberia, out of a total of 1,145 deaths recorded in West Africa by the World Health Organization this year.

Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said protesters in the West Point district attacked a quarantine centre on Saturday because they were unhappy that patients were being taken there from other parts of the capital, Monrovia.

Other reports suggested the protesters had believed Ebola was a hoax and wanted to force the centre to close.

‘Greatest setback’

Mr Nyenswah had said that all the suspected patients had been transferred to an Ebola treatment centre in the John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia.

But on Monday, the information minister said 17 of the 37 patients were unaccounted for.

He said the authorities were now trying to track them down but said he was confident they would return.

“Most of the people that went into this holding facility came there voluntarily,” he told the BBC.

“So our impression is that they still want to be [there], but they were forcibly removed by vandals and looters, not because they wanted to leave; so we are sure that they will return.”

He said the attack on the quarantine centre was Liberia’s “greatest setback” since the Ebola outbreak began.

–

Source: BBC

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