MONROVIA: Children trickled back to school in Liberia on Monday after the restart of lessons that had been delayed for months by the deadly Ebola outbreak, as the country begins to turn the page on the crisis.

The school term began a day after the leaders of Liberia and Sierra Leone, in their first trips abroad since the peak of the epidemic, vowed at a summit in Guinea to eradicate the virus by mid-April.

“Of course I am very happy to be back to school, though most of our friends did not come today. But I am sure they will soon,” said Fatima Sherif, 18, at Kendenja High School, in the capital Monrovia.

“I am not afraid because everyone in Liberia today knows the danger called Ebola. No one wants to die so we have no choice but to respect the rules given by health authorities”. Ebola, one of the deadliest pathogens known to man, is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person showing symptoms such as fever or vomiting.

Unicef — the United Nations’ agency for children — said pupils were washing their hands before entering schools and were having their temperatures checked.

The agency has been at the forefront of introducing safety measures to combat the spread of the virus, which has claimed more than 9,000 lives across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

All three countries have seen a dramatic drop in infections compared with the peak of the epidemic in September and October.

Guinea’s President Alpha Conde and his Liberian and Sierra Leone counterparts Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ernest Bai Koroma made a pledge to achieve “zero Ebola infections within 60 days” after day-long talks in the Guinean capital Conakry on Sunday.

Teachers have been trained to implement and monitor the safety measures, while soap and other hygiene materials have been distributed and mass mobilisation campaigns on Ebola prevention have been conducted nationwide.

Optimism that the worst is over has been tempered in Sierra Leone and Guinea, however, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting the number of new Ebola cases rising for the second week running.

Transmission remains “widespread” in Guinea, which saw 65 new confirmed cases in the week to February 8, and in Sierra Leone, which reported 76, according to the WHO.

Liberia, which has recorded the most deaths and was hardest hit at the peak of the epidemic, is leading the recovery, reporting just three new confirmed cases in that same week.

“I am happy to be back in school. My parents told me to be very mindful, not to be in contact with friends too much, especially when the person has fever,” said Juliet Markor, 15, a student at Don Bosco High School in Monrovia.

More than 1.3 million children have returned to school in Guinea with nearly all of the country’s more than 12,000 schools back open, according to Unicef.

The agency says it has been working closely with the Liberian government and local communities to develop the safety protocols already employed in Guinea.

Unicef said it was too early to be able to have a clear overview of how many schools had opened across Liberia.

“This will happen gradually from today. Typically it can take up to a month before the majority of students are back in the classroom,” a spokeswoman in Monrovia said.

“Throughout that period education authorities will be working to ensure that conditions are as safe as possible”. Unicef and its partners are handing out more than 7,200 hygiene kits for over 4,000 Liberian schools, and training 15,000 teachers and school administrators in monitoring of safety protocols.

“Unicef is supporting the ministries of education and health in our common goal of seeing all Liberian children back in school as soon as possible and as safely as possible,” said Sheldon Yett, Unicef’s representative in Liberia.

Published in Dawn February 17th , 2015

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