The Ebola epidemic currently ramapaging in the Tano River countries of West Africa is showing the potential to gradually wipe out whole families.
A boy who watched as his parents succumbed to the virus and ran away from home has now been diagnosed with the virus.
The 11-year-old boy who was identified Ebola positive at Freetown’s Ola During Children’s Hospital has since been transferred to the Kailahan quarantine centre, leaving anxiety in his wake.
The medical team at the children’s hospital are full of trepidation that they may have caught the Ebola virus from the boy, as they have no protective equipment while treating the boy for malaria.
“The danger is we are not protected, we are taking a big risk; who knows if we are all not now infected ourselves especially the nurses who attended to the boy. Now, we will have to treat all patients as suspected cases to save our own lives.
Pleaded a nurse: “The Health Ministry needs to supply all medical personnel, whether in the Children’s ward or wherever we attend to patients, with protective equipment; we may not know who is infected and so treating patients now is a risk. Only God will save us, as we continue to risk our lives in this manner!
“We appeal to the Health Ministry to provide protective gears to us all; we want to serve humanity but if we are not adequately protected, we will become infected with Ebola and we do not want to die.”
The fear of the nurses is understandable, a doctor, Dr Modupeh Cole, in charge of the out-patients isolation unit for suspected Ebola cases at Connaught Hospital, Sierra Leons’s major referral hospital, was confirmed infected with the virus and sent to Kailahun shortly before the nurses found out about the orphan.
Dr Cole’s house was immediately put under quarantined and food aid supplied to his relatives in there.