Travel to Sierra Leone this fall-- good or bad idea?

September 24, 2015 11:38 AM

A friend of mine has the opportunity to travel to Sierra Leone for an interesting project later this fall. But he doesn't *have* to go, and all the official sites (CDC, etc.) say that non-essential travel should be avoided due to the Ebola outbreak. Obviously, my friend is concerned, but we've also heard the virus is much more under control now. Anyone with an educated opinion want to weigh in?
posted by airguitar2 to Travel & Transportation around Sierra Leone (4 answers total)

The US State Department travel advisory includes contact information for the embassy. Perhaps your friend can contact them directly to feel them out about the current situation? Is this business travel? Even an embassy as small as the one in Freetown has an economic section, their contact info is here and they are supposed to help facilitate this sort of thing.

If your friend does decide to go they should consider following the State Dept's advice to enroll in the STEP program so they can be kept better informed and so the embassy knows they exist and is better positioned to assist if necessary.
posted by Wretch729 at 12:35 PM on September 24, 2015

(If your friend isn't a US citizen the same advice applies only with their embassy.)
posted by Wretch729 at 12:36 PM on September 24, 2015

Best answer: I would say it depends where he would be going, what the most recent outbreak information is, and with whom he is traveling. The WHO report (as of yesterday) is that there are two new cases in Guinea, and no new cases in Sierra Leone, though they are still monitoring contacts of the last reported case (last week, a dead girl in Bombali). There were 6 cases in the past 21 days. If he's from the US, the Embassy is going to be very risk averse for obvious reasons, and will likely dissuade him from going. Keeping him safe in case the virus breaks back out in a significant way is going to be a pretty big waste of resources.

Before I made a decision, I would want more information about the project he'd be working for. For example, I work in Cote d'Ivoire in an area where the US Embassy does not allow their employees to travel due to safety concerns. However, because of my ties to the local community, connections to government organization within the country, access to resources for things like evacuations if necessary, familiarity with the region, and information about very local political and social conditions, I feel comfortable not following the embassy's recommendations, which tend to be pretty broad. I would evaluate his access to these resources and this information before deciding to go or not - and also talk to Sierra Leoneans with whom he'd be involved in the project. They'll have a much more localized understanding of the situation than the US embassy will, depending on where he'd be based.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:15 PM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Just a heads up that the Embassy (the U.S. one at least) will likely not be able to give your friend any more specific advice than what is already in the Travel Advisory and on travel.state.gov. That's the cleared guidance that constitutes the U.S. Government's official recommendations. The reason for sticking to the official guidance is that they don't want people getting mixed message--Jane Citizen gets one story from the website about travel, Joe Citizen gets another when he calls the Embassy, and then something happens to one that didn't happen to the other... just want to help manage expectations. (There's an interesting legal precedent for this dating back to the Lockerbie bombing which created the "No Double Standard" policy on travel warnings to ensure all citizens get the same info. That's neither here nor there, but it would make an interesting FPP one day.)

Definitely register with STEP 100 times over if he/she does travel.
posted by whitewall at 4:18 PM on September 24, 2015