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Construction charity seeks funds for vital work to control Ebola in Sierra Leone

Construction and Development Partnership appeals for cash to provide basic measures to tackle killer disease.

As Ebola continues to fill the news, construction-led charity Construction and Development Partnership (CODEP) charity is working around the clock in Sierra Leone to help the local population cope with the emerging social crisis.

The charity formed by engineering consultant Whitbybird, has been working for over a decade with the community in Waterloo, Sierra Leone, a city of 40,000 people to build a library, train teachers and providing books to the city’s schools. 

However, since the outbreak of Ebola this vital development work has been threatened as the city was quarantined with movement in and out restricted. 

“When parents die, there is no procedure in place for the children to be collected and tested for the disease. We have found children just left to fend for themselves. This a situation that is made worse by the community and their extended family ‘rejecting’ them out of fear and superstition.” CODEP

Since then the charity, who’s president is former Institution of Civil Engineers President Mark Whitby, has switched its focus towards working with the community to provide basis hygiene equipment and to train local in how to cope with and live alongside the disease. 

The team in Waterloo took advice from the local health authorities about what they can do and have been working to help with supply and distribution preventative materials and protective materials. 

It continues to raise money to pay for basic supplies such as a pair of gloves, which for example, costs £5, personal protective equipment £23, a floor brush £5, large tap buckets cost £12.50, chlorine is £10.00 a gallon.

 “Although Waterloo was not one of the regions of Sierra Leone where Ebola first hit, it has become one of the regions which is worst affected” explains its latest newsletter (attached).  

“Indeed it has been officially listed as one of the Ebola hotspots,” it explains. “The first two deaths from the Ebola virus occurred in Waterloo on 25th August. Today that figure stands at over 300 - now more than 20 deaths every day.

After contacting UNICEF who are coordinating the response to Ebola in Sierra Leone CODEP has been asked to focus on :

  • Prevention and sensitivation training. 
  • Food Aid for the quarantined and increasing food supplies;
  • Supplies to the health centre including gloves, protective and sanitisation equipment, chlorine drums, hand sanitisers, liquid soap, floor brushes - all the SL health clinics are running low on equipment and supplies of every kind.

In addition CODEP literacy coordinators have been leading teams in Waterloo looking after and rehoming orphans. So far the team has identified over 150 children.

“When parents die, there is no procedure in place for the children to be collected and tested for the disease,” the charity explains. “.We have found children just left to fend for themselves. This a situation that is made worse by the community and their extended family ‘rejecting’ them out of fear and superstition.”

CODEP’s Emergency Ebola Appeal will run for as long as it is needed.

If you are able to help at all,

please either visit www.codep.co.uk, or twitter account, @codepsl, where you will find regular updates on what the charity has been doing, or

donate via www.justgiving.com/codep-ebola/.

If you would like to contact Antony Oliver about this, or any other story, please email antony.oliver@infrastructure-intelligence.com.