David Anderson
David Anderson's The Ebola Crisis and
Fundraising for Street Child of Sierra Leone
Story
David is an NHS volunteer working at the Makeni Ebola Treatment Centre. David has witnessed first-hand the devastation the Ebola crisis has caused in Sierra Leone and the life altering impact it has had on the local children. We are raising money in the hope of helping those effected.
Below you can read a few accounts of David's time in Makeni and watch a news report regarding the work the NHS volunteers have been doing.
22 December 2014
The treatment centre opened officially a couple of days ago with a multiplayer ceremony and a song. This is a deeply religious country with Christians and Muslims happily living side by side.
A mother and daughter came in. Both were in a terrible state with the mum (27) being only just able to walk and her daughter (13) very emaciated and clearly distressed. I managed to cannulate her but it didn't stay in although we did manage to get enough blood for tests. Sadly both are very positive.
I started with the teams at 7 am and did my last stint in PPE at 8 pm.
It was very clear that the young girl was dying so the team worked hard to make sure that she was comfortable as she passed away. It would have been better if her mum could sit with her but she is too ill but thankfully still alive.
29 December 2014
So the last few days have been a bit mad with anything and everything going wrong from the water leaking in the confirmed zone to a shortage of goggles. Nothing can be sorted quickly. We had to get a plumber who is trained in the use of PPE from 40 miles away to do a 30 minute job of repairing the pipe.
The patients are coming in quickly now and we have managed to discharge 3 so far but sadly lost a few. A grandmother came in at the weekend with her 23 day old twin grandchildren. Their mum had died after a C section and unfortunately had Ebola when she died. Gran was looking after the infants until they were confirmed Ebola positive and she was negative so we gave her the choice of continuing to look after them but in the confirmed zone. We had to explain all of the risks to her and she decided to let them go without her, a difficult decision for her but the right one as she has several other grandchildren to care for. She was obviously very upset when making the choice and heart broken when we told her about the twins’ death. Both twins passed away the night they came in and were really very unwell and distressed until they died.
We discharged a really lively 12 year old today which was great but he has lost his parents and four siblings to Ebola so he is going to one of the few children's homes which exist until a relative can be found to take him. There is no hope of adoption as there are an estimated 8000 orphans to Ebola according to a charity "street child" which runs the homes.
Some of the team are also struggling with the heat. It was 40C today and then you have to wear PPE, so we have had a couple of near misses with people almost fainting. It is really difficult and very tiring even for short periods of an hour.
We are trying to cheer the Place up for Christmas but we can't do very much as supplies are limited and we can't take much into the ETC itself.
6 January 2015