Vébola on holiday

With a backpack full of chocolate and cheese, I boarded an almost empty plane flying back to Sierra Leone after 2 weeks of holiday in familiar Belgium. For the first time in my life I actually stayed at home for a holiday. It often felt like I could as well sleep my way through these 2 weeks: no generator in the background, night by night less dreaming about ebola following you around and enjoying seeing family and friends again.

The last 2 months in Bo were demanding for the whole team, to Ebola or not to Ebola...that was the big question. From one week to another we switched from long-term mode (enjoying a free weekend once in a while) to emergency mode in the Bo project, having no idea how long this outbreak will last. Normal activities have to continue in the hospital as good as possible, but at the same time Ebola is breathing down your neck and we have to offer our support in surveillance activities and case management with limited staff available.

So I wanted to get out for a moment, to clear my head and have normal conversations again. But this was wishful thinking, being back in Belgium I saw it was a hot topic in the daily news, creating a certain nervous athmosphere among people. As an epidemiologist I have quite a comfortable (and amazingly interesting) position in the field: surveillance, mapping, line listing,...and therefore I am not too worried about getting infected. On the contrary, other people are more worried about you being a risk than you consider it yourself. What they don't mention in the evening news is that someone carrying the virus is not infectious if he/she doesn't show symptoms and that it is NOT airborne. You have to practically vomit in someone's face to transmit it and this was not really my plan to do. I checked my temperature daily (being slightly paranoid is not always harmful) and no fever means free pass to hugs and kisses!

Fear is a surviving mechanism, fight or flight reaction is to be expected. In this case the danger is not visible and very lethal, hence understandable that flight is a first choice. Presenting this in real life as people taking two steps back when they see you and will wait until the incubation period of 21 days is over before giving you a hug and a kiss. I didn't realize it would be like this coming back for holidays...having in my mind that I was advised to exchange as much bodily fluids as possible as it is not allowed in Sierra Leone, what a disillusion!

One of my African colleagues dryly made the note that even if a case ends up in Europe, it would not cause a lot of trouble: "Vous, les européens, se trouvent toujours dans des grandes maisons tous seuls,  une vie isolée et individuelle. L'Ebola n'aurait pas de la chance".

Normal activities ongoing, Bo, Sierra Leone [2014]