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Ebola outbreak forces a rethink

With the outbreak of Ebola in Africa over the past year the whole world has been on edge. We have witnessed the very tragic scenes of the toll that this disease has taken in West Africa. Mercifully, due to the efforts of the affected countries and the international community, the virus has largely been contained in three countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Without knowing how long the outbreak would last, we had had no-choice but to re-think our route through West Africa.  As you can see from this map, our original route took us straight through Guinea. As Guinea has been one of the worst hit countries, we thought that we couldn’t take the risk, in addition we would not have been able to gain access to other countries if we had managed to get through Guinea, as quite rightly, controls on the movement of people from the infected areas is very tightly controlled. After considering taking a boat around the infected region to Senegal, we have decided on a plan B that will take us through Mali.

 

OON Africa section new Plan B v2

We did have concerns over the security situation in Mali as there have been outbreaks of violence over the last few years. Having done more research it seems that most of the troubles have been in the North of the country and it also seems to have quietened down recently.

Thankfully, over the last few months Ebola seems to be contained and the numbers of new cases have been falling steadily, with the added hope of a vaccines being distributed in the near future. Capt says: ‘now I’m not worrying, because when you read about how it is transmitted, we are at a low risk.  However, we will bypass the exposed areas and ride around to avoid concern, but, it looks like the Ebola crisis is dissipating somewhat’.