Conakry - Parents have taken their children out of school in some parts of the Guinean capital this week, less than a month after schools reopened, because of fears the Red Cross is spreading the Ebola virus on campus, the humanitarian agency said.
Parents took their children out of school in the Matam area of Conakry on Wednesday, a day after children were removed from their schools in the Ratoma area, the Red Cross said.
“They are accusing us of infecting the schools with Ebola and vaccinating the children, but we have never entered the schools and we have never vaccinated children,” said Youssouf Traore, president of the Red Cross Society of Guinea.
“We only disinfect the homes and places where sick Ebola victims have been and then only with the permission of their family and community,” Traore told the Thomson Reuters Foundation late on Thursday.
The worst ever outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 9 100 people, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Efforts to wipe out the deadly virus are being hampered by people's mistrust of health workers, and by the number of people still hiding sick friends and relatives from authorities, particularly in the Guinean capital Conakry, officials say.
The school term normally starts in October in Guinea, but the government delayed the reopening of schools until Jan. 19 in an effort to contain the virus, which causes vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding, and is spread by contact with bodily fluids.
The U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, said some 47 500 kits containing buckets and soap have been distributed along with 20 500 infrared thermometers. It said around 80 000 teachers have received information and training on prevention.
About 1.3 million children have returned to school in Guinea, but the United Nations said this week that 70 schools across the country had been unable to open because of suspicions about the medical kits being distributed to students.
UNICEF said children dropping out of school could have a long-term impact on both their education and the ability to control the epidemic because pupils are being taught at school how to protect themselves and their families against the virus.
“From our experience in different emergency contexts, the longer children stay out of school, the less likely they are to return,” said Sayo Aoki, education specialist in Ebola emergencies for UNICEF.
“Ebola has hit poor families very strongly, so it is possible that those poor families are more vulnerable than before and require their children to support the family economically,” Aoki told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Schools are due to reopen in Liberia on Monday and in Sierra Leone at the end of March, UNICEF said.
Reuters