Liberia's government has purchased a plot of land to form a graveyard for Ebola victims, relaxing a much-contested order that all Ebola victims' bodies must be cremated.
Ciatta Bishop, head of the national Ebola burial team, said on Tuesday that the government has secured a 25-acre site when victims of the deadly disease can now be buried, Associated Press reports.
The decree which made disposing of deceased Ebola victims through cremation compulsory has been highly unpopular in Liberia, where funeral traditions are carefully followed and are considered a sacred obligation to the deceased.
The Liberian government ordered victims must be cremated, because corpses of Ebola victims remain highly contagious. Many healthcare workers in the affected West African state have contracted the virus after washing or moving dead bodies.
The new burial site in Liberia's capital has been created on land acquired from the Disco Hill district at a cost of $50,000 (£32,000).
Mr Nyenswah said the new site would be staffed by trained burial teams and would accommodate Muslim and Christian ceremonies.
He said the site would allow "dignified and safe burials, where people can practise their rituals but not touch dead bodies".
A memorial to Ebola victims who have been cremated will also be erected there, he added.
More than 2000 corpses of suspected Ebola victims had been cremated after the decree was ordered at the height of the crisis in Liberia several months ago.
The corpses of Ebola victims are highly contagious, and many of those who washed or touched bodies before their burials contracted the disease.
Bishop warned the public that in returning to normal burials "we have to be careful now" so that the process does not lead to a flare-up in Ebola cases.
"They just must not touch bodies otherwise... we will have problems again and the number (of Ebola cases) will rise," Bishop said.
The cremation decree is highly unpopular in Liberia, where funeral traditions are carefully followed and are considered a sacred obligation to the deceased.
Many families have tried to secretly bury their relatives' bodies to avoid them being taken away by burial teams for cremation.
The number of people infected by Ebola in the three countries worst affected by the outbreak has passed 20,000, with more than 7,842 deaths in the epidemic so far, according to the World Health Organisation. Cumulative case numbers in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea stood at 20,081, WHO said in a statement.
Wednesday 31 December 2014
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/liberia-ebola-victims-can-be-buried-after-cremation-decree-relaxed-1481362 https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/25880934/liberia-eases-up-on-ebola-cremation-order/
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