EPA expresses condolence to Ebola victims

The Environmental Protection Agency or (EPA) has extended condolence to families of victims of the deadly Ebola virus disease. The Ebola virus disease which has posed threat to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone enters this country from neighboring Guinea.

The deadly outbreak has also inflicted serious economic hardship in West Africa, leading innocent people to loss their lives, including nurses, healthcare workers, and Doctors.

Speaking over the weekend at the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism in Monrovia,  the Executive Director for the EPA, Madam  Anya Vohiri , said the agency joins the government in extending sympathy to those families, who lost loved ones in the fight against the deadly Ebola virus.

She said the 2003 Act that created the Environmental Protection Agency gives the entity the responsibility to establish, monitor the usage of the environment to coordinate and ensure proper dissemination of environmental information across the entire spectrum of Liberia, while encouraging broad base public participation aims at preventing further damage to the environment.

Director Vohiri said since the establishment of the EPA, Liberians have been developing an ecological consciousness, but added that it remains a simple truth that as a society, the citizens know very little about what work is being  done in the environment, saying,  “We know very little about the additive and synergistic effects of diverse contaminants in our environment, including human health and the climate”

Madam Vohiri also explained that the EPA continues to monitor the environmental implications associated with mass fatality disposal as its mandate requires, noting that the Agency initially issued national guidelines for the selection of burial sites for Ebola victims throughout the country, and conducted an assessment of the Johnsonville site where approximately 38 Ebola bodies were buried in way not environmentally approved.

She narrated that cremation is not Liberia culture, but given the fact that the nation was overwhelmed by an unprecedented virus with increasing numbers of dead bodies with cremation being an option, the nation was not prepared and had no national crematorium, making use of the India crematorium in Boys town, Margibi County, as the only available facility so the choice was made, and said facility was immediately improved upon to accommodate the national response.