New Head of UN Mission for Ebola Response Assumes Duty in Ghana

Ismail Ahmed, the new Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Saturday arrived in Accra, Ghana, to assume duty as the Head, UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

A statement made available to UN correspondents in New York on Sunday stated that he would take over from Anthony Banbury.

According to the statement, Ahmed in a meeting with UNMEER workers commended the activities of the response team in fighting Ebola Virus Disease in that country.

“This is a global crisis. We definitely have a difficult time ahead of us, but we can achieve it.

“We have to get rid of this virus. This is within our reach, we should not be complacent.

“We need to keep going until we don’t have even one case, the work ahead remains very hard but we really have no other choice, the statement quoted the new head as saying.

According to the statement, Banbury, in his address, had earlier stressed the need to eliminate the disease.

“Even while we face a lot of hard work in the days, weeks and months ahead, it’s important to pause and think back to where we were when we started.

“There are predictions that there will be 1.4 million cases by now,’’ the statement quoted him as saying.

According to the statement, Ahmed will visit Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea to reinforce UNMEER’s strategic priorities.

A report by UNMEER indicated that the three affected countries have capacity to isolate and treat Ebola patients.

Before his new appointment, Ahmed served as Deputy Special Representative and Deputy Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the latest report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that there are 20,206 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola and 7,905 reported deaths.

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