There are many dreadful things about the Ebola outbreak, but the worst is the world's indifference to it.
few months ago I read a blog of an MSF volunteer who found himself shouting over the beautiful jungled canopy of Sierra Leone “Where is everybody”? Today, four months after the World Health Organisation declared an international emergency, I did the same thing. I had gritted teeth and clenched fists and it came out as more of a squeak than a war cry but still, my fury and incomprehension echoed his. I always knew I would find it frustrating being unable to provide care as sophisticated as I would like for patients suffering, but this isn’t only about the unavailability of intensive care units and swishy machines that beep. This isn’t only about watching young people die in a terrible way and being able to offer nothing but time-honoured words of comfort in badly accented Krio.
This is about people dying in triage tents with no access to any kind of medical therapy as there are no beds available. This is about having to put desperately sick people in ambulances for five hours as that is how long it takes to get to the nearest treatment centre with space. This is about laboratory turn-around times that mean that people negative for the disease sit in beds next to patients with profuse vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding for up to eight days, waiting for their test results. This is about how the world knew that a nightmarish plague had hit west Africa and the world waited over six months and then sang a song about it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11258136/Ebola-diary-where-is-everybody.html
few months ago I read a blog of an MSF volunteer who found himself shouting over the beautiful jungled canopy of Sierra Leone “Where is everybody”? Today, four months after the World Health Organisation declared an international emergency, I did the same thing. I had gritted teeth and clenched fists and it came out as more of a squeak than a war cry but still, my fury and incomprehension echoed his. I always knew I would find it frustrating being unable to provide care as sophisticated as I would like for patients suffering, but this isn’t only about the unavailability of intensive care units and swishy machines that beep. This isn’t only about watching young people die in a terrible way and being able to offer nothing but time-honoured words of comfort in badly accented Krio.
This is about people dying in triage tents with no access to any kind of medical therapy as there are no beds available. This is about having to put desperately sick people in ambulances for five hours as that is how long it takes to get to the nearest treatment centre with space. This is about laboratory turn-around times that mean that people negative for the disease sit in beds next to patients with profuse vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding for up to eight days, waiting for their test results. This is about how the world knew that a nightmarish plague had hit west Africa and the world waited over six months and then sang a song about it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11258136/Ebola-diary-where-is-everybody.html
