The President, John Mahama is optimistic that the fight against the deadly Ebola disease will be won before more lives are lost.
He was happy with the international response so far towards helping the three affected West African nations; Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to safeguard the lives of their citizens.
“The world is beginning to do something and so the worst case scenario is not likely to play out. The initial response was very slow but I think that it’s picked up,” he told CNN’s Richard Quest on Wednesday.
The disease has caused 2,811 deaths and affected over 5,800 people and the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ebola infections could reach 20,000 by November if efforts to tackle the outbreak were not stepped up.
Ghana is expected to play a central role in the international force against Ebola as the United Nations (UN) is to set up a Mission for Ebola Emergency Response to be based in Ghana.
According to President Mahama, the response to the disease in the three nations have picked up saying, “the treatment centers are beginning to come up, the isolation centers are coming up, the governments have done a lot of work in putting in place screening procedures to ensure that they don’t allow people to infect others.”
He admitted that in the initial stages of the outbreak, there was a panic response because “it was a new disease in West Africa and people did not understand they way it was spread and so the initial responses were knee jerk.”
He recalled that there were border closures, the suspension of airline flights but “I think that now we have a better understanding of the disease and our response should be more measured.”
Regarding the isolated cases recorded in Nigeria, President Mahama who is also the chairman of ECOWAS confidently stated that Nigeria has eliminated Ebola.
