Francesca Ginnett has just returned from Sierra Leone where she was tasked with making sure essential supplies reached health workers and volunteers fighting Ebola. This is her take on the last month.
So, how was it?
This is the question I keep getting asked. A simple ‘interesting’ or ‘tough’ won’t suffice, but I don’t know how to summarise the last month in a few words.
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I was in the capital Freetown, on the roads, in the warehouse, at the airport, at the Red Cross treatment centre.
I have seen a lot over the last five weeks. Thousands have died from Ebola. They suffer, their families suffer, the country suffers. But they are more than just a statistic, more than just a virus.
They are someone’s friend, relative or neighbour. The numbers belie the personal tragedy.
And what of the people left behind? Orphans, parents robbed of their children, grandparents. This disease knows no limits.
I spent time with the inspiring nurses and doctors who left their homes to come to Sierra Leone to care for Ebola patients, as well as the local nurses who cannot return home for fear of stigmatising their families.
Many have not seen or touched their own children in weeks. Inspiring, heroic, or just doing their job?
The same applies to the Red Cross volunteers I met who are dedicated to safely and respectfully burying the dead, perhaps the hardest job of all.
Every day there are more bodies. Across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Red Cross teams have handled 87 per cent of all burials – 4,404 as of the end of start of November. They work safely and with dignity.
Why do they do it? Bodies of Ebola victims are infectious. They have to be handled carefully – this means two body bags. Grieving families don’t always get a chance to say goodbye.
But it also means the chances of transmitting the disease are reduced. Prevention is as important, if not more important, than the cure.
Grim predictions
In this crisis there hasn’t been a peak, things aren’t getting better and every day there are new predictions.
Over dinner with colleagues the conversation invariably turns to the new estimates of cases from the World Health Organisation, or the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
We talk about the infections yet to happen and the lack of people arriving to tackle this outbreak.
Why isn’t anyone coming? The international community has been slow in its response. Only now has the magnitude of the crisis been realised.
Before I arrived I didn’t realise that many people in Sierra Leone do not believe that Ebola is real, a real disease that is spread through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
Again, Red Cross volunteers are at the forefront, trying to raise awareness about the disease. They are on the ground every day bringing life-saving messages to communities – more than three million people have been reached across West Africa, 812,089 in Sierra Leone.
How do they reach people? Any way they can: door-to-door, radio, mobile phone, social media, TV, posters.
In Freetown, life seems to carry on, business as usual. Busy and hectic, women and men balance large plates or baskets on their heads with food or household items for sale. The humidity is intense and everyone seems filled with purpose.
But there are large posters – ‘Ebola is real’, ‘How to avoid Ebola’ – dotted throughout the city. There are chlorine buckets and temperature checks outside public buildings, and there are sirens – ambulances driven by men dressed in white protective bodysuits.
These things you see. But you can feel the undercurrent of fear. It’s everywhere.
On the road
The items we are transporting to the Red Cross Ebola treatment centre in Kenema are body bags, protective equipment, painkillers, stretchers. Along the roads there are checkpoints at every junction, everyone jumps out, gets their temperature checked, washes their hands with chlorine and jumps back in.
Try not to look hot, try not to look unwell, no touching. Somebody in the line sneezes. We all look at them apprehensively, wash hands with antibacterial wash over and over. Drive off. There are checkpoints every 30 minutes in a six-hour journey.
I think the hardest thing to control is yourself: don’t touch anyone – not even a shoulder pat. Don’t itch that scratch in case you leave broken skin, wash your hands before doing anything and everything, are you sweating? Is it the heat or the other thing? Temperature check, reassurance.
Don’t interact or engage with strangers. Don’t worry too much about your headache, or should you?
The exposure to Ebola for anyone working outside a medical facility is small, the protection procedures are strict, there has been no chance of infection today. I think.
A local colleague asked my why this happened to them, why isn’t it stopping? I don’t know the answer. I still want to believe that help will come.