Ebola is not black magic. It is a virus than can and should be contained

I’m writing this somewhere over Morocco and my stomach is tied in little knots of excitement and just a hint of trepidation. I’m en route to join the King's Sierra Leone Partnership which is currently running the Ebola Isolation Unit in Connaught Hospital, Freetown. After a year of happily living in PhD-land, which has mostly involved wrestling with pipettes, I’m hurling myself into the biggest outbreak ever of a virus the very name of which makes people blanch. Bonkers. Clearly.

And yet there really isn’t anywhere else in the world I should be. I’ve always hero worshipped those who volunteered for Medecins Sans Frontieres and similar crisis response NGOs, and wondered if I‘d have the guts to go myself. Furthermore this is my field: bugs, viruses, bacteria, fungi, other disgusting parasites and the war we wage on them. I’m single, with no kids – my only dependants being my pot plants, and I am not currently on a clinical rota, which would tie me into working set times in a hospital. I knew my family would be supportive, albeit rather anxiously. This was what struck me two months ago when I initially thought of volunteering: who else should be staffing these treatment centres but people like me? This is potentially one of the most important events in the field of infectious diseases that will occur in my lifetime.

This is not to say that when the idea first came to me it wasn’t also associated with a hearty dose of fear. One of my colleagues asked me if I felt like I was “going over the top”. But the more I read and understood about Ebola, the less scared I became. This is a virus after all, not black magic. A horrific virus that has been laying waste to three countries, but a virus that can and should be contained. This is the resounding message I’ve heard from health care workers currently in country and those returning. We have to scale up treatment centres, both to offer effective care to sufferers and crucially to separate those infected from uninfected. Every day that there are Ebola victims unable to access a treatment centre is a day the virus will win. But the overriding mood among those working in the outbreak is not one of despair or fear, but of a huge energy and determination to get things done. There is so much to do and to understand about the virus and its manifestations: who is more severely infected, what is the best method of providing fluids (via drip or orally), whether there may be some protective factors … the list goes on.

The weeks ahead will be gruelling, heartbreaking, and hugely physically demanding – I’m sure I will live to regret a facetious comment that my hot yoga addiction would prepare me for the sweatbox of personal protective equipment. That said, I know I will hate leaving in five weeks and be eager to return as soon as I can possibly swing it. Sorry Mum.

Felicity Fitzgerald qualified as a doctor in 2006. She is paediatrician studying for a PhD in infectious diseases at the UCL Institute of Child Health. A month ago she volunteered to work in Freetown with the Kings Sierra Leone Partnership and is working at the Connaught Hospital Ebola Isolation Unit. This is her diary.

You can donate to the Partnership appeal here.

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