Many schools in Liberia have reopened, six months after they were closed to try
to curb the spread of Ebola.
Pupils welcomed the move, but some raised fears that the deadly disease had
not yet been totally eradicated.

Staff at school gates were equipped with thermometers to take pupils’
temperatures and buckets of chlorinated water for them to wash their hands.
Liberia was one of three West African states worst affected by the Ebola
outbreak, identified in March 2013.

More than 9,000 people have been killed by the virus, but there has been a
general decline in the number of cases in recent weeks.
Only three new confirmed cases were reported in Liberia in the week leading to
8 February, according to the World Health Organisation
The leaders of the three states – Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Guinea’s Alpha
Conde and Sierra Leone’s Ernest Bai Koroma – pledged at a meeting in
Guinea’s capital Conakry on Sunday to achieve “zero Ebola infections within 60
days”.

Guinea reopened its schools a month ago and Sierra Leone plans to do so at
the end of March.
Many schools in rural areas are not yet ready to open as they lack basic
equipment such as chairs and soap, says the BBC’s Jonathan Paye-Layleh in
the capital, Monrovia.

Deputy Education Minister Remses Kumbuyah told our reporter he was confident
the schools would reopen in the next two weeks.
The government had put in place many preventative measures to prevent the
spread of Ebola in schools, he said.

“We are asking all the school administrators to ensure that a classroom should
not have more than 45 or 50 students. In the past they used to have 100 or
more,” Mr. Kumbuyah said.

The Ebola outbreak has been the deadliest ever
Paul Toe, the dean of students at the Catholic-run Saint Michael High School in
Monrovia, said the closure of schools had a psychological effect on pupils.
He also said some of the school’s pupils are now pregnant because they have
not been at school and their parents “cannot control them” at home.
Theresa Larmah, 22, who was heading for a computer lesson at the Richard M.
Nixon High School in the city when our reporter spoke to her, said that the
closure of schools had been a good way to fight Ebola but the more “we sit at
home, the more we go backward.”

Another pupil, Eric Blackie, said that with Ebola not yet wiped out “we will be
afraid to touch each other in class, some colleagues will be afraid to come
around; but we cannot just be sitting at home”.
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