Situation Report

MONROVIA, Liberia — Marking the progress in controlling its Ebola outbreak, the Liberian government dismantled a crematorium and removed drums containing the ashes of more than 3,000 Ebola victims cremated during the height of the epidemic, whose last patient was discharged last week.

 Liberia resorted to cremating the bodies of Ebola victims when communities rejected burials in their areas for fear the disease could spread and contaminate their soil and affect them. The cremations were very controversial because they were against traditional burial practices. But those customs, including washing and touching the dead, spread the deadly Ebola which brought the government to impose cremations.

Religious leaders gathered Saturday at the former crematorium outside Monrovia and prayed for the victims who came from many different religious groups, Acting Information Minister Isaac Jackson told The Associated Press.

The 19 barrels of remains will be buried on a 25-acre plot bought by the government as a cemetery for Ebola victims.

Image: A rally against the expansion of the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, Canada, in November, 2014. Photograph: Mark Klotz/flickr

theguardian.com - March 4th 2015 - Martin Lukacs

The Harper government is trying to win support for its pipelines and resource agenda by pushing First Nations to sideline their aboriginal rights in exchange for business opportunities, documents reveal.

The news that Canada’s Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs is working to this end by collaborating with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is sparking strong criticism from grassroots Indigenous people.

worldbank.org - November 20, 2014

CLICK HERE - The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic : Short- and Medium-Term Estimates for West Africa (109 page .PDF report)

AFP                                                                                                                    March 6, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AFP) — Sierra Leone's Vice President Sam Sumana was expelled from the ruling party on Friday as he spent a sixth day confined to his home under Ebola quarantine.

                                                  Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana

The ruling All People's Congress told a news conference in Freetown the action was unconnected to the outbreak and was the result of an investigation lasting several weeks into Sumana's conduct and background.

"The VP has said he was a Muslim but investigations found this to be incorrect," said the party's secretary-general Osman Yansaneh as he laid out a number of accusations against the vice president.

Yansaneh said Sumana's claim to hold a degree from a US university had turned out to be false, and that he was also accused of being responsible for "frequent unrest" in his eastern home district of Kono.

The fourth allegation against Sumana was that he was plotting to set up a breakaway political party, Yansaneh told reporters at the party headquarters.