BY ISSA DAVIES
Whenever 50-year-old farmer Abdul Thullah passed through Pate Bana village in Bombali district, Sierra Leone, to work on his farm, he would remark the shiny white tarpaulin tent structures that had recently been erected. Sometimes, from afar, he would observe the workers moving around inside, dressed in their overalls or space-suit like protection suits.
“I was bewildered and so one day I asked a fellow farmer in the village what the structures and people were all about,” said Mr Thullah. “He told me the tent structures were clinics or holding centres for suspected Ebola patients and the people in space-like dressings were the nurses and health workers who take care of these patients.”
What he could not know at the time was that soon he would have a much close view of those tents.
These structures are known as Community Care Centres (CCC), which UNICEF helped set-up in Pate Bana (Bombali district) and 45 other communities in five districts in Sierra Leone since November, largely with funds from DFID. The government facilities provide temporary care and isolation to persons showing Ebola signs and symptoms until the results of their blood tests are revealed, usually a day or two later.
“As soon as a suspected case of Ebola reports at the centre, we triage them and provide interim care and support,” said Nurse Zainab, the head nurse at Pate Bana CCC. “If they are positive after their test results are out, we send them to the treatment centres; if negative they are discharged when stable and without symptoms for three days. Follow-up can be done at the community health centres if needed.”
The Pate Bana community was chosen for a reason – Ebola has claimed the lives of around a hundred people in the community, and the village (population 200) was put under quarantine for two months. To date, across all districts covered by the UNICEF-supported CCCs, over 6,000 patients have been triaged with more than 500 patients admitted.
Mr Thullah was one of the positive cases.
“I was working in the farm one afternoon when one of my wives came to me feeling sick with high fever,” he said. “I felt sorry for her, held her close to me and wiped away the sweat that was pouring off her body. I advised her to go the hospital which she did.”
She travelled the 8 miles to the Magbethe Treatment Centre in Makeni but later died. A few days after touching his sick wife, he too started feeling sick and immediately reported himself to the local CCC in Pate Bana.
“I was strong enough to have walked to the CCC on my own without any support from anybody,” he added. “When the nurses saw me coming, they warmly welcomed me and told me to sit in a room after which they immediately dressed up in their PPEs [Personal Protective Equipment] and started administering treatments to me.”
“The nurses at Pate Bana CCC were very friendly and nice and they gave me food three times a day, plenty of water, a nice bed to sleep on and a blanket to keep me warm,” he continued. “I was in the Pate Bana CCC for two days awaiting the results of my tests and on the third day an ambulance came to take me away. I knew I was positive.”
Fortunately, ten days after being admitted to the Magbethe Treatment Centre, Mr Thullah was discharged as a survivor.
“I, together with the rest of my family [one other wife and five children], would have probably died in my village if the CCC hadn’t been established close to my community.”
“It provided me with the necessary care and early support when I needed them most,” he said.
Issa Davies is a Communication Officer with UNICEF Sierra Leone