By Umaru Fofana
Victoria Yilliah had just returned from church when I arrived at her residence in Koindu, Kailahun District in eastern Sierra Leone. Beautifully dressed and wearing a nice perfume she hugged her son – her second but only child. She sang for him, caressed him, before readying him for food. Clearly she loves him. Obviously every mother loves her child, you may say. But this is a special relationship. “This child is my essence in the world today” she told me.
Victoria’s first child died shortly after birth some three years ago. It was a near stillbirth. Memories of that child are as fresh on her mind today as those of her first pregnancy. Her eyes reddened. Icicles of tears started dripping, then oozing.
Born with an abnormally high body temperature, her first born survived for just days. It was suspected that the death could be attributed to what had befallen her almost exactly five years ago. Victoria was the first laboratory-confirmed Ebola patient in Sierra Leone. She was also the first known survivor.
After apparently dozens if not hundreds had already died of what would later be confirmed as Ebola, Victoria started having complications. Pregnant at the time, she was taken to the health post in the town. With poor facilities, she and others were crammed into the same maternity ward as did many other pregnant women. High fever, haemorrhaging and death; high fever, bleeding and death. One by one they were brought in. One by one they died. Cause of death uncertain. Among them lay Victoria. Helpless.
Her bleeding stopped. She was discharged to make room for another of the more and more (pregnant) women being brought into the very small health centre in quick succession. A couple of days later, her bleeding resumed. This time, at home. She was referred to the Kailahun District Hospital. Her husband, a college student in Kenema asked that she be taken to the provincial headquarter town instead.
The road is among the worst in the country. On a motorbike she sat. The pain from the bumpy road was added to her agony, as she kept bleeding. She lost her first pregnancy. So you can see she is a woman sandwiched by the death of a child she held but lost a few days later, and another that she never even saw. You can imagine why she loves her son so dearly. She also lost nearly 20 other close family members to Ebola.
Victoria arrived at the Kenema Government Hospital on the 19 May 2014. This was five months since the onset of the Ebola outbreak in neighbouring Guinea had been confirmed. A couple of months after the virus had snaked its tail into Liberia. Leaving Koindu sandwiched by the virus and gripped by fear. The Sierra Leone authorities had assured that there was surveillance going on around the border areas. It was apparently a lie. Otherwise why, despite all those deaths from bleeding, no one had even suspected Ebola!
Even in Kenema with a better and bigger health facility there was no readiness. The health workers who responded to Victoria at the maternity unit did so without gloves. They were completely unprepared and grossly ill-equipped. They stood there like troops fighting ISIS with catapults.
20 May 2014: They tested her for Lassa Fever because the area was and still is part of the belt for the virus which also causes haemorrhagic fever. She proved negative.
21 May: Another round of test on poor Victoria. Again for Lassa Fever. Again the result: Negative. You would imagine if the health workers were really prepared for Ebola by the authorities the first suspicion would have been Ebola.
It was not until 24 May before her blood sample would be collected for Ebola. Result came through on the following day: Positive. Panic gripped the health workers who had been responding to her. The disease would snowball. And the rest, as they say, is history.
In the end thousands of people died. Many could and would have been saved if our leaders had not been clueless. Never mind the corruption that eclipsed the fight. Senegal and Ivory Coast built treatment centres and deployed labs along their borders. The case that entered Senegal was spotted. Treated. Nipped in the bud.
Among those who died here was a little boy, probably five years olds. I saw him walking by the doorway into a treatment centre in Kenema, like going to the gallows. He never came back. Thousands of women and children would be orphaned and widowed. Among them Mabinty, whom I saw selling her wedding ring to be able to pay school fees for her children. And a four-year-old boy I saw at the Port Loko Government Hospital sitting on a bed with a teddy bear. He had gone blind. His parents were killed by the virus, he got infected, recovered, but lost his sight as a result. Or Daniel who lost his mum, got infected and recovered. He said he wanted to become a medical doctor as a tribute to those medics who treated him. Today he is pursuing that dream and is in medical school, thanks to Save The Children. Sadly their funding ends next year leaving a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the future of Daniel’s medical career. He has five years more to complete.
There are thousands of others out there suffering as a result of Ebola with no one caring about them. A disease which I call the Poor Man’s Disease. Besides health care workers, almost everyone else who caught Ebola here was poor.
The nation does not care about the victims. Please be honest here: did you notice the anniversary of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone last week? Unless you lost a loved one, were infected and are still alive, or something that close, chances are that you did not remember.
Five years since the outbreak ended, we don’t seem to have learned any lessons. We are a country where sanitation is poor. Piped water is a pipe dream for most. We are without even a dialysis machine. People with kidney complications have to depend on a private citizen whose nursing daughter in the United States sent him one to look after him. That has become the life saver now. Those dialysis machines donated by Israel a few years ago have broken down. Our West Africa neighbours, Ghana, have become the new Germany to us. They are an example of what good leadership begets a country. Not a country where even opening a courthouse will bring government to a halt because all ministers will be there, leaving their job undone. If only for the president to see them. I pray for Maada Bio to soon put a stop to that!
Victoria and her thousands of fellow victims need assistance. People who even in the best of times found life difficult, let alone in the wake of that debilitating disease. The government must revisit the situation of Ebola survivors, orphans and widows as a matter of urgency. Or we risk abandoning them like we did the war victims. The consequence of which is evident for all to see.
© 2019 Politico Online
