Why I’m spending Christmas fighting ebola in Sierra Leone

Dave Terry is a logistics advisor for GOAL at the Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone. Here he describes how he will spend his Christmas this year helping GOAL fight the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone.

FOR me, Christmas celebrations this year won’t amount to much more than they have done for the past five out of six years.

Let’s just say that my options will again be severely limited.

There will be no houses to visit on Christmas Eve; not a lot of presents to wake up to on Christmas morning; and no difficult choices to make about where to have lunch or to spend the day.

I’ll be in Port Loko in Sierra Leone, where I’ve been since October and will remain until at least February.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I love my job as an emergency logistics adviser for Goal, and am delighted to be able to play my part in our battle, as it were, against ebola.

This deadly virus has claimed thousands of lives across West Africa, and my colleagues and I are determined to do everything in our power to help bring it under control.

People from home ask me if I’m concerned about contracting ebola myself.

No, I’m not.

If you take the necessary precautions, which amount to frequent temperature checks, regular hand-washing in chlorinated water, and a strict policy of no physical contact (of any kind, with anyone) then you should remain perfectly safe.

Goal has taken possession of our new state-of-the-art ebola treatment centre at Port Loko.

This facility will be staffed by doctors, nurses, paramedics, laboratory technicians, and various psychology, social, and other experts.

There will also be ancillary staff including cooks, cleaners, ambulance crews, and burial squads.

The people who will be working at the treatment centre have undergone intensive training.

They will have direct contact with patients infected by the ebola virus, so the protocols they must operate by, and the precautions they are required to take, are much more stringent than for the rest of us.

The precautionary measures for many of them will include wearing the spacesuit-like personal protect equipment that has featured so often on television news bulletins.

There was a particularly heart-breaking moment at the treatment centre this week.

A nine-year-old girl was admitted, after testing positive for ebola. She is an orphan, having lost her parents to the virus.

Indeed, it soon emerged that all of her close family has died from ebola.

As far as can be ascertained, she has nobody left in the world.

A few hours after she was admitted, some of the medical staff went into her ward to carry out their regular checks on the patients. But she was nowhere to be seen.

After a little while, one of the staff noticed her peering out from under a bed, where she had taken refuge.

One can barely imagine the fear that child was suffering. She has lost everyone and everything she has ever known.

First the people she loved disappeared, and then she was suddenly detached from familiar surroundings and taken to a strange place, where she is being dealt with by people in spacesuits.

Let us hope that she will be cured, and eventually get to leave the treatment centre, upon which she will fall under the care of our psychosocial team.

Stories such as that of the little girl are commonplace here in Port Loko.

There have been 1,800 confirmed ebola deaths in Sierra Leone since the current outbreak began in May of this year.

Of those 1,800, there have been 900 in the Port Loko district alone. During November, 250 people died from ebola in Port Loko.

The latest figures for December show that 70 people have died already.

To call the region where Goal is based an ebola hotspot is something of an understatement.

Let’s hope that with the Goal ebola treatment centre up and running, and the expertise and care available to communities at our facility, we can control and eventually defeat this virus.

My job is to ensure the smooth running of every aspect of the support structures underpinning our operations in Port Loko.

This ranges from procuring supplies to hiring staff, securing staff accommodation, sourcing vehicles, fuel, and drivers, and an awful lot more besides.

I helped to set up most of the support structures at Port Loko, as I’m usually in the vanguard when we respond to an emergency.

I’ve lots of experience of living and operating in a challenging environment, having served with Goal in places like Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Haiti.

There will be plenty of time for holidays at my home on the Aran Islands when I get too old for this job.

In the meantime, there are too many lives to be saved and people to be helped for me to concern myself with such things.

Besides, not many people in Sierra Leone are thinking of holidays at the minute. So why should I?

Dave Terry, from Blarney in Cork, is a logistics adviser for Goal’s ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone.

More than 200 Goal staff are delivering aid and development programmes to help combat the spread of ebola in Sierra Leone, including the management of the treatment centre in Port Loko.

For more information, or to donate, visit www.goalglobal.org