By Umaru Fofana
Yesterday 29 July was five years to the day Sierra Leone lost arguably its biggest hero this generation. Dr Sheik Umar Khan was the arrowhead in the fight against Ebola when the outbreak officially happened in May 2014. This is a story about him and how he has been forgotten by a nation he died defending.
This is a story about a man who struggled to enter medical school and did so by chance. He later had to pay his own fees to specialise abroad. He returned home to continue giving his service to his people despite being in high demand abroad. The state promised to reimburse him for his overseas studies but never did. Enter a scourge! The nation was clueless. He bravely took the lead and confronted the scourge. He would later succumb to it. His people openly wept for him. But his country let him down in sickness and even after death.
As the country’s sole virologist and the man in charge of the Tulane University-funded Viral Haemorrhagic Fever Centre in Kenema, Dr Khan folded his sleeves and readied himself for the battle against Ebola. If he was a soldier fighting a war he could have been justified for deserting the frontline due to lack of Weapons, Arms and Ration (WAR).
I salute all our 10 doctors and the more than 200 other healthcare workers killed by the virus. But by far my longest salute will go for Dr Khan. He did not die by chance. He and his nurses, ambulance drivers and lab technicians in Kenema, died because they were infected at the frontline when they knowingly dealt with Ebola patients. They faced the bull by the horns.
Like fighting Al Qaeda or ISIS with AK 47s or even catapults, Dr Khan and his team lacked some of the most basic protective gear they needed to be able to do so. Most of them were also poorly trained, which led to many of them contracting the virus and dying. This pulverised the morale of their colleagues many of whom abandoned the centre leading to more and needless deaths of patients.
Dr Khan was a man who always wanted to become a medical doctor. He had to meander his way to medical school. I remember meeting his dad, who died early this year at age 103, at his lovely home at Lungi in northern Sierra Leone. He told me that he did not have the connections required at the time to send his son to the medical school. Poor, unknown let alone influential. So Khan went to Fourah Bay College instead.
It was while he was in first year at FBC that his dad had a chance meeting with an old pal of his. One thing led to another and he mentioned his son’s desire to become a medical doctor. In a country where people don’t often get to become what they want to be until they have the right buttons to move, that chance meeting became the chance for Khan to find his way to medical school. But as God would have it, it also became the route to his early death, aged 39 years.
After medical school at COMAHS, Dr Khan would later be posted to the VHF Centre in Kenema. He was not a trained virologist and had the desire to so become. He paid from his pocket to specialise in Ghana. Even though the country did not have a single virologist, the government did not see the need to fund him to do so. He told me during a chat at the height of the outbreak, that the government had promised to pay him back. It would be a hoax. He died without his $ 10,000 reimbursement.
Dr Khan died a very disappointed man. One of his staff had first taken ill and was admitted at the MSF-run treatment centre in Kailahun. Dr Khan would later be reunited with him. The man, whom I’d call only as Sankoh, told me that he became the aide to his former boss. But he also had his own illness to contend with.
Another patient in the centre told me that Dr Khan frequently hissed to himself. He looked restless. Many things playing on his mind, among them, of course, his own death. But he was concerned about the hundreds of others already admitted and at risk of being infected. He was not there to help them. “I’d rather God had killed me instead of Dr Khan” Sankoh told me.
Among the things on Dr Khan’s mind was the expectation that he would be flown abroad for treatment as he had been promised by the government. Miatta Kargbo, the then health minister said that her government would do everything to save Dr Khan’s life. It would later emerge that nothing major had been done to save him. The main promise was that he would be flown abroad for treatment. All those who had been flown abroad at the time recovered. He was asked to prepare his passport. He sent for it in Kenema. Feeling excited. Hoping to get well and return to saving lives. That turned out to be a hoax. The state raised his hopes but shattered those hopes and his heart.
The issue brought up the issue of foreign agencies flying their own staff abroad when they fell ill. Yes it was part of their contractual agreement. But it would be almost impossible to rationalise why Dr Khan would not be flown abroad. I certainly wondered why agencies like WHO didn’t fly Dr Khan where his government had woefully failed him.
The world brought the trial drug, ZMAP. For some ethical reasons, MSF argued, it would not use it on him because the WHO had not yet approved its trial. All hopes were pinned on the flight abroad which never happened. Even pagans prayed to God for his recovery. Only the then Deputy Health Minister, Dr Abubakar Fofana made any serious attempt to see him at his treatment centre. It’s a disease which thrives on love and compassion and so doesn’t accord the luxury of visits, yes. But Dr Khan was a special patient. And some senior state officials, including a parliamentarian, told the nation that they’d paid him a visit. Former workers at the centre said false.
Dr Khan later died. The nation was in shock. People wept openly. His death brought about the realisation that Ebola was real and vicious, and the paranoia that it would kill all of us. We prayed for his soul. Some government officials made PR out of it, pretending they cared. But even the responsibilities of his two children left behind would not be taken over by the state. His daughter, 24, and his son, 17, are being cared for by their uncles and aunts.
Not a single street has been named after Dr Khan with official thieves having this accorded them every now and again. It has taken the United States Government to pay a befitting tribute to him. They have built a magnificent VHF Centre inside the Kenema Government Hospital compound which has been named after him.
Dr Khan’s brother, C-ray, says that shortly after the burial of his brother, he received a call from the then health minister, Miatta Kargbo, saying that she and the then president would visit the Khan family on the following day. Almost five years on, they’re still waiting.
Sadly, as I write hardly have any lessons been learned from the treatment of Dr Khan. Many wrongs against him and his colleagues can still be righted. But ours is a country where time takes away our sense of empathy for others, let alone their entitlements. Dr Khan certainly deserved and still does deserve better.
© 2019 Politico Online
