Meet Elizabeth, 25, and her sister Salimatou, 22. They work in Medair’s Ebola isolation unit in Sierra Leone, and they are among the survivors of this terrible epidemic.
In a matter of weeks this past fall, they lost their mother and father, their grandmother, and a brother and sister. Most heartbreaking of all, Salimatou lost her four-year-old daughter Sarata. The Ebola virus robbed them of more than half their family.
Their mother was a generous and dedicated nurse, well-respected in the community. One day in September 2014, she began feeling unwell, with headaches and body pain. This was before the Ebola outbreak was common knowledge – it must be malaria, they all thought. Neighbours and friends came to pay her a visit. She died days later.
Soon their father got sick, and the virus worked its way through the family. “We all had headaches and started vomiting and having diarrhoea,” says Salimatou. “Then one night my father said, ‘Tomorrow, we all go to the hospital.’ Later that night he died.”
Their grandmother and brother died, along with four neighbours and friends who had come to the house to visit. Still, nobody told them it was Ebola and no quarantine measures were set up.
Elisabeth and Salimatou went to the hospital with their sister and young Sarata, and they were all diagnosed with Ebola. Elisabeth was experiencing joint pain and could barely walk. Salimatou couldn’t keep any food down, and both of her eyes were infected. After weeks of treatment, the two sisters recovered, but not before Ebola claimed the lives of their sister and Sarata.
“I believe God spared us,” says Elisabeth. “We spent two weeks in our home with infected people, and we were already very weakened. But our brother, who was so strong, died. We should have died too. When our Ebola tests finally came back negative, I knew I should rejoice because I had survived Ebola, but I couldn’t because I thought of all the people I had lost.”
Once they were discharged, the sisters went back home to their two surviving brothers, but they were shocked to find themselves outcasts in their community. “Our neighbours, who were like our aunties and uncles, didn’t want to see us or talk to us because they said our mother caused others to get sick,” says Elisabeth. “People would not talk to us or look at us, and even refused to sell us food. When we tried buying bread, they would pretend they had run out. It got very difficult to survive. We spent many days hungry.”
Such painful stigmatisation has been very hard on this diminished family who needed compassion, love, and acceptance most of all.
“One day, Lifeline Nehemiah Projects staff members came to our house to tell us about the Ebola Treatment Centre Medair was setting up in Kuntorloh. They asked if we were interested, as student nurses, to work there. We were so happy to be given this opportunity to help out Ebola patients. We understand what they’re going through,” says Elisabeth.
“When we started working at the centre,” she continues, “there was a change in people’s behaviour in our community. They started talking to us again, and some even apologised for their attitude. But I am still cautious. We were so hurt and disappointed.”
Both Elisabeth and Salimatou work as dressers (dressing people in their Personal Protective Equipment before going into the centre’s Red Zone) and as nurse’s aides. They put a smile on their faces every day and give the best of themselves.
You might expect them to hide away in their grief. Instead, they are determined to stop more people from dying from this terrible disease. They are surviving Ebola.
