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Photo taken on Sunday,
Aug. 24, 2014 People stand in line, at the Roberts International Airport as
they leave Liberia, with fear of the Ebola virus spreading in the city of
Monrovia, Liberia. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh, File)
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Robtel Neajai Pailey hadn't been back home to Liberia since
Ebola engulfed the country's capital in July, fearful that doing so could make
it harder for her to travel as countries around the globe clamped down on
visitors with West African passports.
So it was a mix of shock
and anger earlier this month when she couldn't get a visa to attend an
important meeting in the United Arab Emirates that had been months in the
making.
It didn't matter that she
had not even been in Liberia during the epidemic. Nor did it matter that
Liberia was declared Ebola-free more than a month ago.
AP report continues:
"It's not just
affecting people who are in the country — it's all of us who have Liberian
passports," said Pailey, an academic, activist and author who is based at
SOAS, University of London.
"This constant stigmatization
of the country has implications for our post-war economic recovery and for our
post-Ebola economic recovery," she said. "It's almost like we're a
pariah."
The World Health
Organization declared Liberia Ebola-free in early May. Still, fear of the
deadly disease still reigns in many places, causing students to miss out on
scholarships abroad, and keeping relatives from attending weddings and
funerals.
The virus can only be
transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone showing
Ebola symptoms, but many countries remain wary of visitors from West Africa.
Before strict controls went into place in Monrovia last year, a
Liberian-American man was able to fly to Nigeria while sick, sparking an
outbreak there.
Liberia borders Guinea
and Sierra Leone, where Ebola cases continue to appear, so some other countries
are still screening travelers from Liberia since it is still highly vulnerable
to a reappearance.
Ebola returned to Sierra
Leone's capital, Freetown, this week after being absent for 18 consecutive
days, officials there said. A young man sick with the disease in another part
of Sierra Leone ran away from a quarantine area and came to Freetown, Patrick
Fatoma, a spokesman for the National Ebola Response Center, told The Associated
Press.
"We at NERC are
extremely disappointed and we are now actively conducting contact tracing and
surveillance exercises," he said Friday, adding that as of two days ago
there were 19 Ebola patients in treatment centers across the country.
The United States this
week announced it is scaling back its screenings of arriving Liberians,
Liberia's Foreign Affairs Ministry said, though Liberians will still have to
enter the United States through one of five selected U.S. airports. They also
must still leave contact information with authorities on arrival, said David
K.B. Akoi with the Liberian ministry.
The number of flight
options remains slim for people wanting to fly into or out of Liberia. Only one
of the airlines that withdrew its service at the height of the crisis — Kenya
Airways — has resumed service since the epidemic was declared over. It joins
the two carriers that never left — Royal Air Maroc and Brussels Airlines. Five
other carriers have yet to resume service.
While restrictions are
slowly lifting, the changes are coming too late for many.
Simankan Kouroumah's
father died in Senegal but because of the Ebola restrictions he could not have
his father's body sent back to Guinea by plane. Instead, he tried to bring the
corpse home by land, determined to give him a proper funeral.
At the border, officials
refused to let the vehicle pass.
"After a day at the
border under the hot sun his body started decomposing," says Kouroumah, a
32-year-old university professor in Conakry. "I asked the local villagers
to help me bury my father there. There weren't even 10 people there. He was
buried like a thief or a pauper. It still haunts me."
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