We are dying of Ebola; where’s the world?

On Friday, September 19, Sierra Leone embarked on a three-day national shut-down for Ebola house-to-house sensitisation, deploying thousands of government staff, NGO workers and volunteers in an attempt to identify infections and educate a frightened public about the realities of the disease.

I was a member of the rapid response team in the effort.  

There is no hospital or clinic that is untouched by this disease and we are losing healthcare workers every day. The Aids Healthcare Foundation that spearheaded the exercise lost Dr Khan, its medical director, to Ebola in July.

Dr Khan’s passing left a vacuum in the organisation that cannot easily be filled. He was a leading expert in his field. Our country is in dire need of medical professionals if we are to halt the spread of this disease.

Dr Khan provided medical care for our patients in the AHF Kenema clinic before this pandemic began to ravage our country.

Our ability to effectively treat patients is crippled because he was not only providing care for HIV patients, but also mentoring our staff. It is going to be very difficult to recruit a replacement even when the Ebola crisis passes.

Where shall we find another doctor who will be as committed and passionate as Dr Khan in our response to HIV?

Where is the world? Our doctors are dying. Our nurses are dying. Our lab technicians are dying and help does not come.

The only medical professionals getting life-saving treatment are foreign nationals, people from America and Europe. Dr Olivet Buck contracted Ebola and despite pleas to the World Health Organisation for evacuation to Germany where a facility was waiting to admit her, she was denied the opportunity and left to die.

One WHO lab technician contracted Ebola in Kenema and the entire team was evacuated. Most samples are now sent to the over-burdened, under-resourced Kenema where the CDC lab is located: a hospital where dozens of staff have become infected and many died.

ISOLATION UNITS

If we have no doctors and no nurses, who will treat our people? How will they survive? Our hospitals lack basic medical supplies like gloves, masks and boots.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the Red Cross are on the front line, running the isolation units, treating the sick. AHF has distributed $450,000 worth of equipment and supplies, sharing with national hospitals in Freetown and Kenema. We have recruited volunteers to trace our patients and ensure they receive treatment.

NGOs are doing all they can, but they don’t command military infrastructure, and they don’t have endless resources and thousands of trained personnel. NGOs cannot stop Ebola without help, and help is not coming.

 Is it because we are African, or my country is too small or too poor or because we have no oil? Maybe it is because world leaders can’t find Sierra Leone on a map and this crisis has become one more in a series of African tragedies. Ebola only grabs Western headlines when Americans are threatened.

There have been more confirmed cases of Ebola in the past 21 days than in the entire six months that preceded them. Families continue to bury their dead, risking infection because we don’t have the staff or resources to help them.

Our staff are afraid. Their families are afraid of them when they go home. The stigma around this disease has seen our African brothers close their borders to us and the realities of this disease is killing our most valuable weapon in the fight to stop Ebola, our healthcare.

Our people are dying and the world doesn’t care. We are on our own and we are running out of time.

Mr Jambawai is the Sierra Leone Country Programme Manager for the Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF)