New UN special envoy on Ebola response makes first visit to Sierra Leone

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE                                                                April 29, 2015
The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today said that surveillance and community engagement still require improvement in some areas of Guinea and Sierra Leone where new cases continued to surface, a day after the new Special Representative for UN Ebola Response, Peter Graff, was informed of a continued transmission epicentre on the border between those two countries.

Mr. Graff joined outgoing Special Representative Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, and the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Ebola, David Nabarro, on a visit to Freetown, Sierra Leone, during which they were briefed by the National Ebola response Centre (NERC) on efforts to achieve zero transmission.

“They were informed that Kambia District was still a transmission epicentre due in part to it neighbouring Forécariah in Guinea, which continues to record a high number of Ebola cases,” the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) reported.

UNMEER also reported that efforts were underway to strengthen collaboration with Guinea in different areas, including in sharing information as well as making using of the laboratory in Kambia for Ebola testing of suspected cases in Guinean border towns.

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