Reporting from the front lines of Ebola

17 October 2014 - 12:40 By Tulip Mazumdar
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Bodies being removed from Connaught hospital
Bodies being removed from Connaught hospital
Image: Mark Georgiou

BBC Global Health Correspondent Tulip Mazumdar has written about her experiences reporting on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The world is in new territory. We have never seen an Ebola outbreak on this scale.

More than six months and 4,000 deaths later, West Africa is still battling an invisible and relentless killer. It's a battle it's currently losing.

While many of the world’s media have only recently turned their attention to Ebola, I've been covering this crisis for BBC World News since the World Health Organization first declared the outbreak in March.

I travelled to southeast Guinea, where the first Ebola case was reported, just before the number of new cases and deaths shot up at the end of July. Last time I was in the region there had been 670 deaths. This time, as I travelled to Sierra Leone at the start of October the death toll was touching 4000.

The front line is invisible

 

Working on the Ebola frontline is challenging. For a start, you can't see the frontline. You also can't see the enemy which is intent on finding you, living in you, multiplying inside you, and then taking your life before jumping into someone else.

It’s a frightening thought isn’t it? But it’s easy to forget that this is how most viruses are spread. And this is why initiatives like the BBC’s daily Ebola bulletins on World Service Radio and World News TV are so important.

Ebola may be particularly deadly, but it’s also relatively difficult to catch and is itself quite easy to kill – with the use of mere soap and water.

If you don't touch it, you can't catch it. The virus is not airborne. It's passed through body fluids of infected people. Plus, people are only contagious if they are actually showing symptoms, such as fever. That is why we have seen so many deaths among health workers and family members caring for the sick.

The risk to our team was always much lower than the brave health and community workers fighting this virus, or the normal Sierra Leonean families having to live side by side with it. But we took some very stringent precautions to keep our team safe.

Ebola Handshake

Safety is always a priority for BBC journalists in the field. Before we left London, our team carried out a detailed risk assessment in consultation with the BBC High Risk team, the BBC's chief medical officer and our editors. We planned each activity and noted the potential risks involved and what we would do to mitigate them.

Together with my producer Mark Georgiou and our camera woman Rachel Price, we were deployed to Freetown with our biohazard expert, Mac McGearey. He oversaw the safety of all our activities.

We had two golden rules – one: avoid any physical contact with anyone, including each other, and two: constantly use disinfectant spray on our hands and soles of our shoes, particularly when reporting from treatment centres and communities.

The latter was fairly easy, but having to stop ourselves instinctively shaking hands with people we met and interviewed was much more difficult. We became well accustomed to the new “Ebola handshake" which involves patting your chest instead.

Biohazard

One of the riskierstories we told was that of the Freetown gravediggers who are overwhelmed with the number of suspected Ebola victims they are now burying. Every day they are digging around 20 graves.

Bodies of Ebola patients are particularly contagious, so we had to seal ourselves into white biohazard suits, which included rubber gloves, goggles, masks, and plastic coverings over our shoes.

We watched as three bodies were lowered into graves. One was a man who had died on the street. No one even knew his name.

When we left the burial site, Mac had to remove our gear in a specific way - cutting us out of our suits and turning the gloves inside out as he peeled them off. We disposed of everything in special biohazard bags which were later burned.

The men handling the bodies were all wearing protective gear, but others hanging around the graves were not. The gravediggers and body handlers are recruited by the government and are supposed to be paid “danger money” to undertake this grim task – around $100 a week. However, the next day they went on strike because they hadn’t received their promised cash.

Heartbreaking decisions

On another day of filming, we visited an Ebola treatment centre just outside the capital. When we arrived we met the Samuka family who were parked outside the tented facility begging the medic at the door to help their brother. But they were being turned away because the centre was full.

I peered into the car and saw a man in his 40s sat in the passenger seat staring vacantly into space. His bloodshot eyes, lethargy and hiccups all clear signs of Ebola.

We couldn't get too close, but I wanted to speak to the family. So I shouted over to them to ask what was happening, extending a "boom mic" - a microphone attached to a long pole - towards them.

"My brother Francis is sick, and they won't take him at this centre." his sister told me.

"What are we supposed to do? We've been travelling from hospital to hospital all day and no-one will take him."

I looked at Francis and asked, "How are you sir?"

"My chest hurts, it hurts when I drink," was all he could muster.

After almost an hour the family eventually got back in their car and left. Everyone in that vehicle was now potentially at risk of catching Ebola. The next day Francis’ sister called us. They had managed to get Francis to an isolation centre, but he had died within hours of being admitted.

This was a story that we happened to catch on film, but this is happening every day in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Medics at the treatment centre told us that they cannot go over capacity or they put everyone else inside the centre at risk. One of their doctors had already contracted the virus. It’s an impossible and heartbreaking decision, but these medics tell me they are having to turn people away every day.

Sadness, desperation, but also resilience, dedication, kindness and bravery

Our team along spent six days in Freetown, often working with local BBC reporter Umaru Fofana. During that time we saw much sadness and desperation. But we also saw great resilience, dedication, kindness and bravery.

What’s needed now, according to every health worker, community leader and international aid agency we spoke to, is more medical staff and treatment and isolation facilities on the ground.

Community engagement is also vital, they say.  There is still a great deal of fear and suspicion around this outbreak, which means communities are not isolating sick relatives and they are carrying out traditional burials, where they closely handle infected bodies, which is also helping spread the virus.

The window of opportunity is fast closing to bring this outbreak under control. As the recently appointed UN special envoy on Ebola, Dave Nabarro, pointed out, if the international community doesn’t do more right now to help deal with this crisis, “the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever”.

That is a frightening, but increasingly real possibility.

  • Tulip Mazumdar (@tulipmazumdar) is the BBC’s Global Health Correspondent, reporting for BBC World News. You can see her reports on ‘The Reporters’ broadcast on BBC World News this weekend or visit at bbc.com/ebola.

    Alongside the channel’s in-depth news coverage, the BBC has also been broadcasting daily Ebola bulletins on BBC World Service Radio and BBC World News TV as part of its public health information initiative. This is includes an ebola service for people in West Africa on instant messenger app Whatsapp.

    The BBC agreed to share her experiences with us, to help promote their special report The People vs Ebola, which will be broadcast on BBC World News (DStv channel 400) on 18 October at 09:10, and 19 October at 10:10 and 14:10.

    All pictures courtesy of Mark Georgiou.

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now