Aug 3, 2014
Health workers carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in Sierra Leone
Health workers carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in Kenema, Sierra Leone
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Health workers carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in Sierra Leone
Health workers carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in Kenema, Sierra Leone
The lives Ebola took lie buried Like mounds of yam on forgotten farms The lives Ebola left behind... now that's a whole other story. Photo and Poem by Nana Kofi Acquah (www.nkaphoto.com) @africashowboy (Copyright: 2016). #Ebola #LifeafterEbola #ebolasurvivors #sierraleone #kailahun #opensociety #sendwestafrica #onassignmnent
As Ebola infections drop, Liberian capital reawakens
Now, ever so slowly, signs of normalcy are returning to the capital. With the rate of new Ebola infections down, traffic is up.
Boys play soccer and girls play kickball, less afraid of skin-to-skin contact than they were a few short weeks ago. Businesses are welcoming back a few workers — not many, and not all at once, but some.
Discussions have begun about when and how to reopen the schools without reigniting the epidemic. Perhaps in January, some say.
New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post
New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2014/08/19/survivors-enlisted-sierra-leones-ebola-battle/
Survivors enlisted in Sierra Leone's Ebola battle
KAILAHUN, Aug 19, 2014:
Hawa Idrisa was visiting her father-in-law on an Ebola ward in eastern Sierra Leone when his drip snapped out and his atrophying veins spurted thin, uncoagulated blood into her eyes and mouth.
Hawa had been carrying her infant daughter Helen but luckily she had laid the child down, otherwise the baby would almost certainly be dead by now.
A single droplet of blood smaller than a full stop can carry up to 100 million particles of the deadly Ebola virus, yet one is enough to end a human life.
“The blood got all over me, and people were running away. So I took a bucket of chlorine and poured it over myself,” Hawa said.
She returned home to forget her ordeal, but a week later she began experiencing fever and headaches, the early symptoms of the Ebola.
Her 12-month-old mercifully tested negative, but her husband Nallo was infected and he and Hawa checked into the Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) treatment facility in the eastern district of Kailahun.
Hawa spent four weeks drifting between life and death at the centre, in the district capital Kailahan city, a trading post of 30,000 in the Kissi triangle linking to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t even know where I was. I don’t remember anything from that time,” she told AFP of the ordeal she survived.
Ebola kills more than half of the people it infects, putrifying their insides in the worst cases until their vital organs seep from their bodies.
It is highly infectious but not particularly contagious, meaning that once you are exposed, your chances of escaping the fever are extremely low, although it can only be passed on through bodily fluids.
Survival and suspicion
The good news is that when patients are caught early enough, given paracetamol for their fevers, kept rehydrated and nourished, their chances of survival increase dramatically.
Hawa proudly shows off a certificate saying she has recovered fully, and she is preparing to return home.
“I know there is nothing wrong with my daughter, but my mind and heart will be at the centre with my husband,” she says.
Already more than 2,100 people have been infected across four west African countries, and 1,145 people have died, dwarfing previous Ebola outbreaks.
The epidemic is perhaps worst of all in Sierra Leone, which has registered 810 cases, more than any other country.
An MSF medical worker, wearing protective clothing, relays patient details and updates behind a barrier to a colleague at an MSF facility in Kailahun, on Aug 15, 2014. — AFP pic
The hardest-hit districts, Kailahun and the diamond trading hub of Kenema next door, have been sealed off to ordinary members of the public.
Around a million people in the two districts are in effective lockdown, and locals say soaring food prices are pushing the region towards a crisis.
Local doctors and nurses are fighting not just the disease, but also the distrust of locals who fear modern medical practices.
Relatives have been known to snatch infected loved-ones from clinics to die in their own villages, exacerbating the spread of the virus.
They have even attacked treatment centres — as armed men did in neighbouring Liberia at the weekend — convinced that Ebola is a Western conspiracy against traditional African communities and that foreign health workers are in on the secret.
Some 1,500 police and soldiers have been deployed to prevent raids, but they are powerless faced with the suspicion and fear of poorly educated traditional communities.
Many tribes people at the epicentre of the outbreak either don’t know how to prevent and treat Ebola or do not believe it exists at all.
This, says MSF, is where the survivors come in.
Building trust
Ella Watson-Stryker, 34, a health promoter with the aid agency, is part of a team taking Hawa and other survivors home to their villages.
She will gather their neighbours and family members around, answer their questions about the virus and try to reassure them that Hawa poses no danger.
“This is very exciting for us. It’s also really beneficial to the overall response to the outbreak because when survivors go home, they can explain about their stay at the centre.
“They give people hope that it is possible to survive and it really builds trust between the community and MSF,” she says.
Watson-Stryker also says that when survivors go back to their communities, people begin to understand that treatment centres are not just “a place where people go to die”.
They are surprised to learn that patients are fed, given unlimited soft drinks, access to toilets, showers and medicine, and that their families are encouraged to visit.
“We try to assuage the fears of the community, because there are a lot of rumours out there, that as soon as you come to the treatment centre, you will just be left to die.”
Back at the MSF centre, Nallo enthuses about his future with Hawa and their baby girl, despite remaining in grave danger in the high risk area.
“At first people thought that when they got here, they were going to have all their blood removed and they would die,” he says.
“They have been giving me drugs and I am much better, so when I get back to my community, I will tell people that if it ever happens that they get Ebola, we advise them to come here.”
New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post
New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2014/08/19/survivors-enlisted-sierra-leones-ebola-battle/
Survivors enlisted in Sierra Leone's Ebola battle
KAILAHUN, Aug 19, 2014:
Hawa Idrisa was visiting her father-in-law on an Ebola ward in eastern Sierra Leone when his drip snapped out and his atrophying veins spurted thin, uncoagulated blood into her eyes and mouth.
Hawa had been carrying her infant daughter Helen but luckily she had laid the child down, otherwise the baby would almost certainly be dead by now.
A single droplet of blood smaller than a full stop can carry up to 100 million particles of the deadly Ebola virus, yet one is enough to end a human life.
“The blood got all over me, and people were running away. So I took a bucket of chlorine and poured it over myself,” Hawa said.
She returned home to forget her ordeal, but a week later she began experiencing fever and headaches, the early symptoms of the Ebola.
Her 12-month-old mercifully tested negative, but her husband Nallo was infected and he and Hawa checked into the Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) treatment facility in the eastern district of Kailahun.
Hawa spent four weeks drifting between life and death at the centre, in the district capital Kailahan city, a trading post of 30,000 in the Kissi triangle linking to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t even know where I was. I don’t remember anything from that time,” she told AFP of the ordeal she survived.
Ebola kills more than half of the people it infects, putrifying their insides in the worst cases until their vital organs seep from their bodies.
It is highly infectious but not particularly contagious, meaning that once you are exposed, your chances of escaping the fever are extremely low, although it can only be passed on through bodily fluids.
Survival and suspicion
The good news is that when patients are caught early enough, given paracetamol for their fevers, kept rehydrated and nourished, their chances of survival increase dramatically.
Hawa proudly shows off a certificate saying she has recovered fully, and she is preparing to return home.
“I know there is nothing wrong with my daughter, but my mind and heart will be at the centre with my husband,” she says.
Already more than 2,100 people have been infected across four west African countries, and 1,145 people have died, dwarfing previous Ebola outbreaks.
The epidemic is perhaps worst of all in Sierra Leone, which has registered 810 cases, more than any other country.
An MSF medical worker, wearing protective clothing, relays patient details and updates behind a barrier to a colleague at an MSF facility in Kailahun, on Aug 15, 2014. — AFP pic
The hardest-hit districts, Kailahun and the diamond trading hub of Kenema next door, have been sealed off to ordinary members of the public.
Around a million people in the two districts are in effective lockdown, and locals say soaring food prices are pushing the region towards a crisis.
Local doctors and nurses are fighting not just the disease, but also the distrust of locals who fear modern medical practices.
Relatives have been known to snatch infected loved-ones from clinics to die in their own villages, exacerbating the spread of the virus.
They have even attacked treatment centres — as armed men did in neighbouring Liberia at the weekend — convinced that Ebola is a Western conspiracy against traditional African communities and that foreign health workers are in on the secret.
Some 1,500 police and soldiers have been deployed to prevent raids, but they are powerless faced with the suspicion and fear of poorly educated traditional communities.
Many tribes people at the epicentre of the outbreak either don’t know how to prevent and treat Ebola or do not believe it exists at all.
This, says MSF, is where the survivors come in.
Building trust
Ella Watson-Stryker, 34, a health promoter with the aid agency, is part of a team taking Hawa and other survivors home to their villages.
She will gather their neighbours and family members around, answer their questions about the virus and try to reassure them that Hawa poses no danger.
“This is very exciting for us. It’s also really beneficial to the overall response to the outbreak because when survivors go home, they can explain about their stay at the centre.
“They give people hope that it is possible to survive and it really builds trust between the community and MSF,” she says.
Watson-Stryker also says that when survivors go back to their communities, people begin to understand that treatment centres are not just “a place where people go to die”.
They are surprised to learn that patients are fed, given unlimited soft drinks, access to toilets, showers and medicine, and that their families are encouraged to visit.
“We try to assuage the fears of the community, because there are a lot of rumours out there, that as soon as you come to the treatment centre, you will just be left to die.”
Back at the MSF centre, Nallo enthuses about his future with Hawa and their baby girl, despite remaining in grave danger in the high risk area.
“At first people thought that when they got here, they were going to have all their blood removed and they would die,” he says.
“They have been giving me drugs and I am much better, so when I get back to my community, I will tell people that if it ever happens that they get Ebola, we advise them to come here.”
Kailahun, a poor but resourceful trading post like any other in Sierra Leone until a few short months ago, has found itself at the epicentre of the worst-ever outbreak of the feared Ebola virus. No one gets in and no one leaves the eastern districts of Kailahun and neighbouring Kenema without special government dispensation, as part of an emergency quarantine. One mistake, one wrong move, and you're dead -- that's it," a senior aid worker in Kailahun tells AFP. The death toll from an Ebola outbreak that began at the start of the year stands at 1,145 in four afflicted west African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. Source: AFP
SIERRA LEONE, KAILAHUN : An MSF medical worker feeds an Ebola child victim at an MSF facility in Kailahun, on August 15, 2014. Kailahun along with Kenama district is at the epicentre of the world's worst Ebola outbreak. The World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed that the latest death toll from the Ebola virus in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria had claimed more than1000 lives. Health Organizations are looking into the possible use of experimental drugs to combat the latest outbreak in West Africa. AFP PHOTO/Carl de Souza
“Digan en Europa que nos tienen que ayudar, que el Ébola es real” 43 enfermos luchan por sobrevivir en un centro de aislamiento en Kailahun, Sierra Leona. Lee el artículo de José Naranjo en El País: http://bit.ly/Vc1A3y Foto de P. K. Lee - “No hay que tocarse las gafas de protección una vez dentro en el área de aislamiento”