Sierra Leone News

The "Rescue Team", an association set up by Ebola survivors to help fellow survivors trying to put their lives back together again, is now exploring ways to contribute to the Ebola outbreak response in Sierra Leone.
"How can I make a life when I have no hope? My future is blind," says Sherrie Bangura as he contemplated life after recovering from Ebola virus disease.

One of the great challenges in this Ebola outbreak is finding ways to safely provide essential health services like child immunization while still fighting the Ebola outbreak. This is the story of what the community health care team in Kamasondo village are doing to reach all the babies born in the district during the Ebola outbreak and vaccinate them against common childhood killers.

Three Liberian ambulances, with 20 Liberian staff joining their Sierra Leonean colleagues in the fight to end Ebola
After a two-day journey bumping along more than 500 kms over rough roads and dirt tracks, 3 ambulances and a team of 20 Liberian health experts have arrived at last in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.
The team aims to train up its Sierra Leonean counterparts and establish the base of a First Responder Team. They plan to stay at least 6 months and the ambulances will remain in Sierra Leone.

WHO’s social mobilization team is using radio to reach communities with information about how to prevent the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone.
Reaching communities not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally as well.
“My work as a social mobilizer is to pass on key messages to convince people to stop the cultural and traditional practices that are fuelling the spread of Ebola,” says Zainab Akiwumi, who leads the WHO social mobilization team in Sierra Leone.

Two successive emergency response campaigns in Sierra Leone to distribute anti-malarial drugs to people living in areas affected by the Ebola virus disease outbreak have successfully reached more than 2.5 million people, and significantly reduced the number of people with fever that might be mistaken for Ebola virus disease (EVD).

Kailahun district in eastern Sierra Leone was one of the country’s first hotspots in the Ebola outbreak, at its peak reporting more than 80 new cases per week in late June 2014. With the assistance of WHO and partners, combined with the close involvement of community leaders, the district has managed to beat the disease and has reported no new cases for several weeks. There is no room for complacency however. Community teams and health workers are on high alert and are ready to react quickly to any possible new infection.

“In our chiefdom we have the necessary structures in place — leaders of all the villages are part of the Ebola response and fully involved, we have an active surveillance approach, and the population is well informed,” explains Philip Musa Koroma, Deputy Paramount Chief of Nimiyama Chiefdom in Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone.

For many people, December 22 was the beginning of the holiday season. But for Rebeca Johnson, a Sierra Leone nurse who survived Ebola, it marked a return to work - and a new lease on life.
"I will take the work normally as I did before. I will wear the full PPE, but I won’t ever be scared again because I have immunity."
Ebola survivor tells her story

When Ebola first swept through Port Loko District, Sierra Leone the rash of sudden inexplicable deaths was so shocking local people explained it as "a witch plane crash."
But as husbands, wives, aunts, uncles and children began to sicken and die they realized this was not a supernatural event but something very human that would take human actions to reverse.

As the Ebola outbreak grows and spreads, a small but significant group of people is also growing - the Ebola survivors. Emerging shell-shocked from what one described as a "glimpse of hell", the survivors have not found life easy on the other side of the Ebola ward.

Some in the community brand them as "witches" for surviving. For many, the faces they longed to see again while lying in the Ebola ward are no longer there. Husbands, wives, children, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers have all been carried off to unmarked graves by Ebola virus disease.