“Cordon” in real life setting?

After 3 weeks of being too tired to play tennis in the weekend I forced myself this morning and cycled over to Bo Club to meet the coach for another session on the court. On my way over there, I heard a woman shouting something at me in Kreo. I could pick up ‘ebola’ in her sentence so I stopped and asked someone to translate it for me: ‘you puwnis are well protected against ebola, but you will infect us and we will die’. As I continued my way I thought about what the women said. Maybe she has a point; we are protected in some way, because the last days a lot has been done to prepare ourselves for an outbreak in Bo. In the houses, chlorine buckets have been installed to wash our food and our ‘bodies’ to kill any virus trying to invade our system. The fact that you smell like a swimming pool the whole day is just a minor inconvenience.

However, it is sad to notice that a lot of people believe that the ‘white men’ are injecting the ebola virus in patients in the hospital. It shows again how important it is to really understand the cultural believes and ways of reasoning in the population, otherwise there is no way this outbreak will be contained soon. These believes and rumours result in people infected with ebola hiding and running away from the hospital, because they are scared. Soon all hospitals in Bo will be empty and all the children suffering from severe malaria will die at home, because their parents are too scared to come to the hospital. Off course they are scared! Everyone is very worried at the moment, puwni or not. 

Pharmaceutical companies don’t invest in finding treatment as it will not pay off the investment. Previous outbreaks have always been contained rather quickly and the number of people infected remained low compared to other diseases. Although there is a lack of treatment, the last months showed that people do fight the virus by themselves and walk out of the isolation ward in good health. Providing supportive treatment like fluids, malaria treatment and vitamins can help to make the body strong enough to fight the virus. That is why it is so important to come to the hospital and get this treatment, and above all, to prevent infecting other people. Too many have died already, this really needs to stop.

I didn’t manage to keep my eyes on the ball today…

Man climbing the waterfalls in Kenema, Sierra Leone, 2014

Love in the time of ebola

You hear people whispering it in the streets,…ebola….like saying it out loud would make it appear right in front of you. MSF plays an important role in the history of ebola, being one of the only organizations with hands-on experience in outbreaks. I wish I could be more of use, but besides explaining the role of primates in transmission of the virus, there is not a lot of expertise I can offer. I am still learning the basics of epidemiology and it was not really planned to get in the middle of all sorts of outbreaks.

In the meantime business goes on as usual, working long hours and reflecting on the things that happened during the day with a nice glass of marula. Since 7 years, I always try to hide somewhere on the 7th of June, not an easy thing to do in this setting. Some days I love it, when you learn new interesting things and you feel you get a very good bond with colleagues that become partners in crime. Other days I really wish to be back home in my nice comfort zone, so I could at least be with my family when my grandmother passed away last week or today with my friends, sharing memories about that special one we lost 7 years ago. I wish I could have told my grandmother that when working in Africa, I often take my second name ‘Clara’, her name, because no one can pronounce ‘Veerle’ (it becomes something like Veelie, Veurlie, Vierleu,...). She would have liked that.

Fortunately in crazy outbreak times like these, we got some good news! The gynaecology and obstetric ward of the hospital will stay functional until the new hospital closer to Bo is up and running and the expertise of handling complicated pregnancies and deliveries can safely be handed over to another hospital. The original plan was to close down the ward in June and continue the paediatric care, but as women often come from far away to safely deliver in the hospital and the maternal mortality is still high in the country it was decided to stay open. On moments like these it is great to be here: if the good news that no one would lose their job would be announced in a Belgian company, everyone would politely smile and quietly think, "yes, I still can redecorate my kitchen this summer", and then go back to work. But when the news was announced here, the midwifes got together, and danced in the rain around the hospital, laughing and singing. 

Midwifes dancing in the hospital after the good news, GRC, Sierra Leone.