ABIDJAN (Reuters) – The billboard depicts a masked health worker in a biohazard suit looming over a bed-ridden patient. Above them, bright red letters warn commuters on a busy Abidjan street that “The Ebola risk is always there”.
As Ivory Coast campaigns to fend off an Ebola outbreak ravaging neighbouring West African states, such grim reminders of the catastrophe unfolding across its western border are everywhere.
The worst recorded outbreak of the virus has killed over 2,400 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, wreaking havoc on their fragile economies, and has also spread to Nigeria and Senegal.[eap_ad_2]
If it reaches Ivory Coast, the powerhouse of French-speaking West Africa, the economic consequences could be yet worse. The country of 20 million people exports 40 percent of the world’s cocoa, the raw material for chocolate, and supplies its landlocked neighbours with everything from rice to fuel.
Ivory Coast is taking the kind of aggressive anti-infection measures that its poorer, smaller western neighbours were slow to adopt. Hand washing stations have appeared at the entrances of government buildings and office towers in Abidjan, the bustling economic capital. People have abandoned the traditional three-kiss greeting.
Mass mobile text messages send out a government awareness campaign nationwide. And children, exposed to the information drive on radio and television, quarantine their classmates in a playground game they call “Ebola”.
“It’s without precedent,” said Daouda Coulibaly, the epidemiologist charged with leading the effort. “We started back in March to explain to people that this is a real disease. It must be taken seriously.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has already warned that several neighbouring countries are at risk. With the outbreak gathering pace, the WHO has said a $1 billion international response will be needed to keep the number of those infected within the “tens of thousands”.[eap_ad_3]