CONAKRY/LIBERIA: High school teacher Fanta Oulen Camara spent two weeks in March fighting for her life against the deadly Ebola virus but her darkest days came after she was cured of the disease and returned to her home in Guinea.
“Most of my friends stopped visiting. They didn’t speak to me. They avoided me,” the 24-year-old said. “I wasn’t allowed to teach anymore.” The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed 5,000 people in West Africa, mostly in Guinea and neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone. But thousands more have survived, ostracised by fearful communities ravaged by the disease.
In the face of such stigmatisation, Ebola survivors like Camara are joining an association in Guinea that assists the growing number of people who recover and seeks ways for them to help combat the disease.
Survivors are believed to have immunity from Ebola thanks to antibodies in their blood, making them a powerful weapon in a fight against the virus. A shortage of healthcare workers means weak West African governments are losing the battle to contain Ebola, despite pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid.
The virus is spread by the bodily fluids of victims, who bleed, vomit and suffer diarrhoea in its final stages. Ordinary medical and sanitary staff must wear heavy Personal Protective Equipment to prevent infection, denying scared patients the chance for human contact — but survivors do not have to.
Camara, who lost six members of her family to Ebola, works with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres at a clinic in Guinea’s dilapidated ocean-front capital Conakry. “We share our own experience with those people, explaining that we were sick but now we have been cured,” Camara said. “We give them hope.”
In Liberia and Sierra Leone too, survivors are signing up to work in Ebola Treatment Units, to care for children orphaned by the disease, and to provide counselling to victims in an attampt to break the taboo surrounding the outbreak.
There is hope that blood from survivors can also be used as a serum to treat the disease. In Liberia, plans are underway to store survivors’ blood and the World Health Organisation has said that treatment could start as early as December.
For Dr Oulare Bakary, who set up the survivors association three months after he beat Ebola, people who recover have an role to play in demystifying a virus that has caused a violent backlash, partly because it has never before struck West Africa.
Bakary was infected while treating patients in March, days before the mysterious virus in the forests of Guinea was confirmed as Ebola. “Everyone has been facing stigma and rejection,” he said. “We needed to send a message to the people about the epidemic and also the possibility to be cured.”
He said that Camara’s story was all too common: not only had she lost her job, but when her brother went to his office, he was told to never come back as well. “It’s not only the survivors of Ebola, it’s their friends and families who are the collateral damage.”
In Liberia, where more than half the deaths have been registered, UN child agency Unicef is enlisting survivors to help care for the rising number of children whose parents have either been killed or isolated in treatment units.
Unicef estimates that 3,700 children have been orphaned by Ebola. Many of those who survive are deeply traumatised and terrified by anyone wearing protective equipment. Only people who have survived the disease already can bring personal care to these terrified, yet possibly contagious, kids.
Reuters
SYDNEY: Australia has issued a blanket ban on visas from West African nations affected by the Ebola outbreak to prevent the disease reaching the country, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said, becoming the first rich nation to shut its doors to the region.
Australia has not recorded a case of Ebola despite a number of scares, and conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has so far resisted repeated requests to send medical personnel to help battle the outbreak on the ground.
The decision to refuse entry for anyone from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, while touted by the government as a necessary safety precaution, was criticised by experts and advocates as politically motivated and shortsighted. “The government has strong controls for the entry of persons to Australia under our immigration programme from West Africa,” Morrison told parliament on Monday.
“These measures include temporarily suspending our immigration programme, including our humanitarian programme from Ebola-affected countries, and this means we are not processing any application from these affected countries.” All non-permanent or temporary visas were being cancelled and permanent visa holders who had not yet arrived in Australia will be required to submit to a 21-day quarantine period, he added.
A number of US states, including New York and New Jersey, have also imposed mandatory quarantines on returning doctors and nurses amid fears of the virus spreading outside of West Africa. Federal health officials say their approach is extreme.
The disease has an incubation period of about three weeks, and becomes contagious when a victim shows symptoms. Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.
Australia has contributed A$18m to help fight the disease but has been criticised by medical groups, opposition lawmakers and rights groups for not sending teams to affected regions. The risks to Australia were already small due to its geographical isolation, said Dr Adam Kamradt-Scott, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity.
The visa ban, he said, would do nothing to protect the country from Ebola while potentially having a negative public health impact by unduly raising fears about the disease and creating a general climate of panic.
Reuters
