The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Liberia schools open after epidemic
Ebola outbreak shut down classes for six months.
MONROVIA, LIBERIA — Students in Liberia began returning to the classroom Monday after a six-month closure during the Ebola epidemic, lining up in their uniforms to have their temperatures taken before they could enter school gates.
Pupils arriving at Saint Michael High School on the outskirts of the capital also washed their hands with chlorinated water before going inside.
“I feel happy to come to school today because for so long I have not seen my friends,” said Albert Kollie, 18. “I am very happy to be counted among the living and I pray that Ebo- la be eradicated from this country.”
Many students said they had grown tired of sitting at home, and at least one principal said teenage pregnancy had spiked during the sixmonth school closure.
A few pupils, though, remained a bit fearful about returning even though there are just a handful of Ebola cases left in the country, which at one point recorded 100 new patients a week.
“We will be afraid to touch each other in class, some colleagues will be afraid to come around,” high school junior Eric Blackie said. “But we cannot just be sitting home.”
Liberia has had the highest toll from the Ebola epidemic, with 3,800 dead.
In neighboring Guinea where the outbreak began, schools already have reopened though many fearful parents have kept their children home.
In Sierra Leone, where disease transmission is now the highest, officials hope to reopen schools by the end of March.
Liberia’s deputy education minister, Remses Kumbuyah, said more than 5,000 kits containing thermometers and chlorine for hand-washing were distributed to schools.
He is also asking principals to avoid overcrowding, a major problem in Liberia’s schools, where as many as 100 pupils may be in a single classroom. Since Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids, administrators want to minimize the potential spread. Health officials have warned that a single new case could trigger a whole new cluster of infections.
Nearly 9,200 people have died since the first Ebola deaths in rural Guinea in December 2013. The disease ravaged Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — all countries with weak health systems that were ill-prepared for such an epidemic.
In Sierra Leone on Monday, the government promised a full investigation after an internal audit found that nearly one-third of the money it received to fight Ebola was used without saving the necessary receipts and invoices to justify the spending.