Via The Independent: Sierra Leone has recovered from Ebola – and is now facing a new crisis. Excerpt:
Nearly 400 kilometres from Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, lies the city of Kenema. Hundreds of miles from anywhere and surrounded by dense rainforest, it remained largely cut-off from the outside world during the deadly Ebola outbreak.
At the height of the epidemic, ambulances would tear through Kenema’s empty streets, taking the dead to the nearest out-of-town burial site. The city’s main hospital was overflowing with patients, ill-equipped to cope with the increasing rate of infections.
Two years on from Ebola being declared an epidemic by the World Health Organisation, life in Kenema has by and large returned to normal. The market is a hive of activity with women selling fruit and vegetables to willing buyers. Healthcare workers no longer have to wear the protective gear reminiscent of a disaster film, and children are back in school.
Yet the struggle the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia face is still very real, and another silent emergency still grips the hospitals.
When I visited Kenema government hospital in November, just a few days after Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free, I found a hospital on its knees.
Already short-staffed prior to the crisis, this hospital lost 37 staff to Ebola. The doctors, nurses, midwives and hospital assistants are doing their utmost to provide the best possible care for their patients, but without running water, adequate sanitation and hygiene, they’re fighting a losing battle.
While I was there I witnessed several newborn babies die. Some lived for a few days, others for just a few minutes – but all of them died from entirely preventable causes including sepsis and pneumonia which could have been avoided if they’d been born in a clean, hygienic environment. This is a place where death among newborns is so prevalent that parents wait a week before naming their children.
Sadly this is not just a problem confined to the maternity and neonatal wards. As we travelled through the hospital we arrived at the mortuary and were greeted by Theresa who told us she was “a friend of the dead.” While we were there, another tiny corpse arrived, but with no space left the body had to be placed on the floor. The child would have been no older than five.
In the distance the sound of three women wailing in pain at the loss of their child echoed around the walls of the hospital. It was a scene reminiscent of what we saw almost daily on our TV screens during Ebola. But this death was not caused by Ebola. It was from entirely preventable causes.
In 2013 more than 4,500 children under five in Sierra Leone are estimated to have died from diarrhoeal illnesses. This figure is higher than the country’s 4,000 Ebola deaths.
If Ebola taught us anything, it’s that you cannot have infection prevention where you lack a reliable, clean water supply, functioning toilets and good hygiene. These are basic frontline defences in the battle against infection and disease. Yet the situation is still not improving.
