Ebola: The Story – Full Transcript
00:00:30,234
SALLY SARA: Like many nations in this unstable part of Africa, it’s strife that’s lifted Sierra Leone out of obscurity and into the world’s view. Brutal civil war, thousands of children pressed into service as soldiers, mutilation as a weapon of intimidation.
00:00:55,594
SALLY SARA: Now that war’s over, another has begun but this time the nation has to combat a very different, very deadly scourge - Ebola.
00:01:06,594
PATRICK MASSAQUOI: “You know, considering the fact that I am going into an affected area that is currently infected by Ebola, it takes a man, you know, for you to go back”.
00:01:23,234
SALLY SARA: Our cameraman, Adam Bailes, is travelling with Red Cross worker, Patrick Massaquoi who’s returning to the Ebola battle zone despite the risk and the worries of his family.
00:01:36,514
PATRICK MASSAQUOI: “You know when you are back from this affected area, friends stigmatise you, even when I went there for the first time, when I came back and my wife said, I mean since you are coming from that place you have to stay far off, you know, for 21 days. I have to really convince her, I have to show her pictures on the videos, that... even though we are involved in that, we are highly protected, you know?”
00:02:10,274
SALLY SARA: They’re heading south-east towards the borders of Guinea and Liberia.
00:02:18,594
PATRICK MASSAQUOI: -Very good morning sir
POLICEMAN: -How are you?
PATRICK MASSAQUOI: I'm fine
00:02:22,954
SALLY SARA: Through the roadblocks and a long pot-holed stretch of road, it’s a 12-hour drive to the town of Kailahun and an Ebola coordination facility on the front line of this African emergency.
00:02:38,354
SALLY SARA: Once Foreign Correspondent’s crew is through, this and other checkpoints will be closed to media as a national crackdown intensifies.
00:02:48,874
DR RICHARD BROOME: [Adviser, International Red Cross] “The environments in which people are living is absolutely a critical part of the effectiveness of the spread of this outbreak.
00:02:57,474
DR RICHARD BROOME: People are living in very basic housing with poor access to water, no ability to isolate themselves. There’s very poor access to healthcare as well. But then there are all these cultural issues as well, such as a healthy mistrust of government, especially in some of these countries that have had very severe civil wars for many years.
There’s a lot of beliefs in black magic and I suppose traditional beliefs, so people often explain things through witchcraft and curses - and all those things come together I suppose with a disease like Ebola to result in these explosive outbreaks.
00:03:54,994
SALLY SARA: Dodo is a town of about 3000 midway between Freetown and Kailahun.
00:04:03,914
SALLY SARA: A large crowd’s gathered. A Red Cross Dead Body Management Team has just arrived and they’re suiting up in the middle of the main street.
00:04:13,114
RED CROSS WORKER: “They want to see... they want to see what we are doing”.
00:04:18,234
SALLY SARA: They’ve been alerted a middle aged man has died in his bed overnight.
00:04:23,674
MAN FROM VILLAGE: “He’s fifty five years old, married with one wife and a child, a boy child. He has been a farmer and he also collects palm nuts from the palm tree”.
00:04:45,514
SALLY SARA: The Sierra Leonean government has decreed that any inexplicable death must be dealt with by designated authorities. Traditional community funerals are not allowed.
00:04:57,234
RED CROSS WORKER: “We are now going to the house and get the... well... just the body management team, Body Management Team enter house and spray and they will proceed with the burial”.
00:05:09,514
SALLY SARA: So, while the circumstances of this man’s death are unclear, his body is being handled as if he had died of Ebola. A sample will either confirm or eliminate Ebola as a cause, but the body will be sealed in plastic, doused with chlorine and taken away for burial. It’s disturbing and confusing for the town’s people. Dodo hasn’t experienced an Ebola death or any infections during this outbreak and they don’t want their town stigmatised.
00:05:50,714
MAN FROM VILLAGE: “Since no, have not got any person die of Ebola.”
REPORTER: No cases?
MAN FROM VILLAGE: No cases of Ebola.
00:05:59,314
SALLY SARA: The new emergency procedures are also causing a little consternation for local leaders here.
00:06:05,394
VILLAGE LEADER: “I am asking if he died of Ebola. That is my concern”.
RED CROSS WORKER: “We are not saying that the cause of the death of this old man now is as a result of Ebola - but what normally this is... is probable case.... probable case... it might be, it might not be”.
VILLAGE LEADER: “Okay”.
RED CROSS WORKER: “That is why government have said we should be doing the burial”.
VILLAGE LEADER: “Well I know that is the procedure that we should not do the burial on our own, but because of the convoy, the way it looks… so fearful that this is a new thing... for the community people - so the majority may have that in mind and be doubtful - is this man not affected by Ebola also?
MAN: Thank you very much. Very happy.
VILLAGE LEADER: So no problem”.
RED CROSS WORKER: “So you feel more informed?”
VILLAGE LEADER: “Yeah, yeah. I’m better informed.”
00:06:53,154
DR RICHARD BROOME: “One of the real problems with Ebola is that the most infectious risk is a dead body of someone who’s died from Ebola. Now that’s a real challenge again in places like Sierra Leone because often people would be dying in communities and they would be having traditional funeral and I guess there are few better ways of spreading Ebola than a lot of the traditional funeral practices that go on in these remote parts of West Africa”.
00:07:17,674
RADIO STATION: We want to welcome, the International Federation of the Red Cross. As and Epidemologist, what is Ebola?
BROOME: Ebola is a virus
00:07:26,434
SALLY SARA: Australian Doctor Richard Broome recently spent a month in Sierra Leone helping to streamline the Red Cross response to the Ebola outbreak. He’s seen first-hand the emergency collide with customary practices.
00:07:46,114
DR RICHARD BROOME: “For the Muslim funeral, for example, it’s traditional to wash the body prior to burial and again so that would put a number of people at risk and then for some of the more tribal or remote areas there would be very traditional burial practices, such as wakes, where lots of people might come into contact with the dead body”.
00:08:06,834
SALLY SARA: It’s the wet season. Roads turn to quagmire and can become more difficult and dangerous. But locals find a way to get from one place to another and out where national borders are porous, mobility is making the transmission of Ebola all the more difficult to contain.
00:08:29,754
SALLY SARA: Kailahun is a market town of around thirty thousand people at the centre of a region of almost half a million. The commerce here makes it a magnet for people from neighbouring Guinea and Liberia. In this outbreak, the central focus of the fight against Ebola is here… Foreign Correspondent has been granted special access to this crisis coordination centre where patients are being tested and quarantined. It’s run by MSF with help from the International Red Cross and the World Health Organisation.
00:09:15,634
MALCOLM HUGO: “The squares on the board represent the… gives us the information on admissions, discharges, deaths”.
00:09:22,114
SALLY SARA: It’s where we find Australian psychologist Malcolm Hugo.
00:09:26,634
MALCOLM HUGO: [Psychologist, Medecins Sans Frontieres] “Okay in the last week and a half
to two weeks there’s been a significant increase in the number of cases coming here and also a significant increase in the number of confirmed cases. People are scared. I guess the kind of suddenness, the suddenness of the epidemic and the catastrophic impact it’s had on small communities where whole families have virtually been wiped out and for surviving members, whether it be a psychological or psychosocial response available to them. And, I mean, culture’s obviously important, but sometimes these people tend to be neglected by their communities because of the stigma attached to it”.
00:10:10,274
SALLY SARA: Malcolm’s retired from his Adelaide practice and for the past decade has undertaken at least one international crisis assignment a year.
00:10:21,714
MALCOLM HUGO: “I’ve worked with one Ebola outbreak in Uganda in 2007. I’ve done two missions in the West Bank. I’ve worked in MDRTB, a drug resistant tuberculosis program in Khadija, which is part of Georgia. I spent six months in Baghdad last year. I was in the Philippines following the typhoon over Christmas. I was in Haiti after the earthquake. I was in Aceh after the tsunami in 2004”.
00:10:56,314
MALCOM HUGO:“You’ve come to pick up some bodies?”
MAN: “Yes, yeah”.
MALCOLM HUGO: “How many will you be picking up?”
MAN: “Nine”.
MALCOLM HUGO: “Nine.
Body removal A busy day… okay”.
00:11:19,394
SALLY SARA: Far from here there’s an intense effort to develop a vaccine. The death rate for this strain is slightly lower than those of previous outbreaks, but most people admitted to this facility can expect to die. That makes Malcolm Hugo’s work here vitally important.
00:11:42,394
MALCOLM HUGO: “I really think grieving and the faith, the way people respond to the death of loved ones, it’s pretty universal. Obviously people are really upset and particularly when they can’t do the things that they traditionally do when somebody dies”.
00:12:19,514
NURSE: “We are taking their temperature... whether they have a fever - at least if it starts at 37.5 or more, that will give us a clue about them.
00:12:35,754
SALLY SARA: In this outbreak there’s been confusion in communities about symptoms. They’ve been told a high temperature is one sign, but earlier health alerts also cited bleeding as another. As it transpires, bleeding is not an indicator with this strain - but many people acting on the earlier advice, assumed they were okay and didn’t present for testing”.
00:13:03,714
MALCOLM HUGO: “It’s difficult to give bad news to patients and I think some of the nurses understandably avoid doing this by just saying to patients, oh you’re going to be moved to a different section, rather than telling them why they’re being moved to a different section, that they need to be isolated from the negative cases. Also they’re concerned about the reactions that they’re going to get. Understandably patients are going to be distressed when they hear this news or in some cases they get a bit angry, so I guess it’s just human nature to try and avoid that conflict”.
00:13:49,954
SALLY SARA: It’s here in a relatively open space cordoned off by a plastic fence - a make shift buffer zone - that infected patients wait for Ebola’s crippling onset. They’re given some pain relief and told to keep up their water intake. They can only hope to survive its three-week attack phase.
00:14:13,514
DR RICHARD BROOME: “It seems that in Sierra Leone at the moment the mortality rate is somewhere in the order of 60% and it’s a virus that spreads through contact with people’s body fluids. Essentially, the virus is one that just overwhelms your body’s immune system and ability to cope and as a result your organs begin to fail, your blood vessels become leaky. So it’s really just overwhelming… an overwhelming of your body by the virus”.
00:14:51,074
SALLY SARA: For many still reeling from civil war, fear of Ebola is eclipsed by a fear of authority, suspicion and superstition have been keeping people away.
00:15:04,994
MALCOLM HUGO: “Particularly when I first came here, lots of rumours about the activities here. There were rumours that body parts were being taken or MSF were injecting people and . I’ve certainly met people that have come here, patients that have come here that were in fear of ah… we were going to take all the blood out of them – a whole range of things”.
00:15:34,514
SALLY SARA: Despite the almost agricultural appearance of these facilities, safety protocols are strictly observed and policed. Everything that’s spent time near or within the isolation zone is scrubbed and sterilised, and yet among the more than 1400 deaths so far in this outbreak, many have been among the volunteers and medical staff dealing with it. Across West Africa, about 170 have been infected. More than 80 have died.
00:16:29,314
SALLY SARA: The busy, colourful city of Kenema is Sierra Leone’s third largest and about three hour’s drive from Kailahun, depending on the rain. It’s home to a large government hospital – the scene of the nation’s single biggest loss of medical staff to Ebola. 20 health workers died after contracting the virus. On the outskirts of the city, Amanda McClelland is overseeing g the rapid construction of another Ebola coordination centre to take some of the pressure off Kailahun.
00:17:08,994
AMANDA MCCLELLAND: So what’s happened is the resident ministers is gone to the road construction company that’s building the highway and essentially forcing them to bring their machines and stuff down. The pressure and the speed that we need to move in the Ebola is
something that we haven’t felt before. Every day we waste, the epidemic continues to spread and is not under control so it’s an unusual situation and extremely concerning”.
00:17:33,394
SALLY SARA: Amanda’s a Queenslander who’s leading the Red Cross response to Ebola in Sierra Leone. She’s a nurse and tropical diseases expert and like any other medical professional, she’s worried about Sierra Leone’s capacity to cope with and contain Ebola.
00:17:51,394
AMANDA MCCLELLAND: “We’ve seen health workers make mistakes.A lady was full term pregnant, presented, was… seemed to be miscarrying. They took her to the maternity ward… they were taking care of a full term miscarriage, and half way through they realised actually she was an Ebola patient and she was positive. Now that one mistake, we’ve got ten to fifteen health workers that are possibly contaminated from that one case”.
00:18:15,234
SALLY SARA: The race is on to get this new Ebola clinic up and running but it will take several months.
It’s a devastating death rate but 4 in 10 are surviving. Back at the Kailahun crisis centre, these teenagers have endured the normally lethal 21-day cycle of the virus and have just been cleared to leave the isolation ward.
00:18:47,474
MALCOLM HUGO: “She had Ebola. Her husband died here”.
00:18:53,194
SALLY SARA: They’ve survived but they’ll head back to their homes and into another ordeal.
00:19:02,074
MALCOLM HUGO: “There’s still a lot of misunderstanding about Ebola in the community even though we have health educators, people still believe that because patients have been here, that they.... when they go home they may be contagious. There has been cases where people when they’ve gone home been marginalised within the community and there’s been quite a stigma involved so we just go home to make sure, yeah”.
00:19:32,034
SALLY SARA: Twenty percent of the patients in Kailahun are under the age of 15. They’re brought here because they’re infected or the family members caring for them are infected. They can be difficult to handle.
00:19:46,794
MALCOLM HUGO: “The baby was positive and has been an inpatient for over three weeks. It was about two weeks ago the baby actually crawled under the fencing here and walked out into the middle of our compound and I’ve never seen people scatter so quickly and she was just standing there with her hands on her hips, yeah, a little two year old feeling quite powerful with the impact she had on all the people here. But somebody quickly suited up and picked her up and returned her to the compound”.
00:20:23,754
SALLY SARA: That child is Lansanna. She’s now being cared for by one of the health workers at the MSF clinic, Mush Tiah and Mush’s husband, Abu Bakar Sesay at their home in Kailahun.
00:20:42,754
MUSH TAH: “So when I go to the containment centre where I can see babies that have lost their mother, lost their family, I can volunteer to take them because I can feel their hurting where a baby is left at this age… when they have lost their mother”.
00:20:57,194
SALLY SARA: Lansanna came to the emergency centre with her parents.Her mother died, her father fights on. Ebola has claimed 17 members of her family.
00:21:11,01
MUSH TAH: “Some babies have got no mothers, some families have all died, so it’s very disheartening. Even now at this time, children do not go to school. So I mean, it’s very disheartening that this Ebola has come to us here”.
00:21:32,474
AMANDA MCCLELLAND: “Some communities that we’ve worked with, they’ve lost 30 or 40% of their population. Some of these places are quite small and how do those communities then undertake agriculture in the future? What happens when the adult population has you know been killed by Ebola and only the children are left? Then we’re seeing what we call almost Ebola orphans where
whole families have died and only the young children are left. So the impacts of this epidemic will be long term in these countries”.
00:22:07,794
DR RICHARD BROOME: “I think the psychology is an enormous part of an Ebola outbreak and not just for the people who are sick themselves, but also for the communities where they’ve come from.
Making sure that they understand the nature of the illness in that person and that once they’ve recovered, that they’re not going to, you know, be able to transmit the disease. The people who’ve recovered, one of the really important things is getting.... they can almost become ambassadors for the disease. They are the people who can give people most hope and use them as symbols of you know,success in this Ebola outbreak to try and change the overall psychology I think and people’s view of Ebola”.
00:23:08,634
MALCOLM HUGO: “Yesterday we had 10 deaths which is a bit of a record for us. I’d estimate at around the 35-40 mark within the last week so it’s been a difficult week for most people. I think the big concern is what’s going to happen to the people here. It’s the first time in Sierra Leone that they’ve had this sort of experience, so it’s a very new and frightening experience for people”.
--------------
00:24:10.21
MAN (Translation): We are spending today here so people can come and get preventive measures.
In order to wash their hands with chlorine. You see?
REPORTER: Why?
SOLDIER (Translation): I’m even asking kids to come and do so because the sickness doesn’t choose. Either big, small, no, the sickness will come anywhere, for any person whatsoever. So that’s why I have ordered them to come and do it.
00:24:31,874
ASHLEY HAMER: Halfway through our drive to Kailahun, we stopped at Kenema, which is another big Sierra Leonean town, and the site of the Kenema government hospital, which was one of the first hospitals to start taking Ebola patients, because it was formerly a centre for Lassa fever, which is also a very deadly disease. MSF and the Red Cross tell me that hospital is a death trap. I went there to see what it was like, and it was chaotic to say the least. I wandered in and nobody checked me at all. Patients are potentially wandering in and out. There's a dirty screening tent on the right hand side as soon as you come in, where nurses in degrees of personal protective, but inadequate personal protective, equipment are interviewing potential Ebola patients, sick patients, about their symptoms.
00:25:32,22
NURSE: We are doing screening - taking patient histories, past and present histories. If they have Ebola we send them to the Ebola ward. Because in some cases, some have symptoms of Ebola – headache, vomiting, diarrhoea - and if you have this we send you to the Ebola ward.
00:25:54,274
ASHLEY HAMER: You have no idea whether the people that you are come into contact with there have Ebola. When I arrived, I overheard a doctor in the background tell me, "Don't touch the walls". The place is potentially completely contaminated, and yet, at the same time, there's a maternity ward, they are trying to treat malaria, they are trying to treat typhoid, as well as having this Ebola isolation unit there.
00:26:25,594
REPORTER: How many patients are in the hospital now?
NURSE: Here? Now? Plenty! I can’t recall it now.
00:26:32,874
REPORTER: Do they have Ebola?
NURSE: Yes! Some are getting Ebola, some are not. We have some that we admitted today.
00:26:42,914
REPORTER: I understand that some nurses have died here?
NURSE: Yes.
00:26:47,994
REPORTER: Can you tell me how many?
NURSE: Well, we are now close to 20.
00:26:54,514
ASHLEY HAMER: You simply cannot have people wandering in and out with potential Ebola symptoms at the same time as patients who might not have Ebola at all and I got the impression that the nurse just didn't really know what she was doing.
00:27:13,554
ANJALI RAO: It's a dramatic death toll amongst the nursing staff. If they are struggling, it's hard to imagine the situation for the villagers. How do they get information about this disease?
00:27:23,154
ASHLEY HAMER: There are teams, local teams, of volunteers who are going out into the rural communities and telling people about symptoms, telling people how to prevent the disease, and telling people what to do if they believe themselves or a relative may have contracted Ebola.
00:27:44:03
VOLUNTEER: We have these charts which we use to display to the people and tell them what to do and what not to do. You see? Now like this one we get the other infection through somebody who has been infected. Like if I’m infected, if I touch the person or if somebody touches me, then the disease will be infecting him too.
00:28:06,674
ASHLEY HAMER: The problem is that this is a vast area with a very large and dispersed population and there are simply not enough people on the ground who are trained to be able to cover the population and genuinely educate people, help people to understand in their own local context, what this disease is and how to prevent it.
00:28:31,954
ANJALI RAO: Now, I understand that funerals are a risk for everyone concerned. Why is that?
00:28:37,434
ASHLEY HAMER: Ebola is transmitted by physical contact with an infected person and a deceased person somebody who has tied from Ebola - is at their most contagious immediately after death. I went out with the Red Cross dead body management team, who are deployed to local communities whenever a death in the community is reported. The government has ordered that all deaths in the communities need to be reported, at which point the dead body management team are deployed to safely deal with that dead body.They have to bury it in the correct, disinfected, safe way and they must swab the body, because it is impossible to tell whether somebody has died of Ebola just by looking at them.
00:29:34:23
DEAD BODY WORKER (Translation): We will still pay the same last respects to the loved one who has died. Okay? The only difference will be that you won’t be able to wash them like you wash them normally, okay?
00:29:11,354
ASHLEY HAMER: The dead body management team made a very big show of dressing up openly in their personal protective outfits so everybody could see what was going on. As you can see they dressed me in some protective gear to be able to stand outside the house and film the process of them going inside and protecting the body.
They then went inside, dealt with the body, and brought the body out. It was a very distressing thing to see. The relatives were - the emotion was raw amongst the relatives, who were right there watching the dead body management team extract the corpse of their relative and bring it out into the front compound.
00:30:43,434
REPORTER: Is it always a big gathering like this? Does the whole village always come out to see?
00:30:50:05
DEAD BODY WORKER: Always.. Always people come out to really see exactly what we are doing and how we are doing it, because the perception used to be different. They were claiming that when this exercise was being done, we were taking some parts from the corpse to do rituals. So this is why now we open the window wide, and they can stand afar, and see what is happening inside.
00:31:21,794
REPORTER: When you turn up in a village, you go to a village to do a burial, and people are angry with you, or they are afraid, how does that make you feel?
DEAD BODY WORKER: Well, I feel uncomfortable because while I’m doing the right thing, people are trying to be ungrateful for my efforts so I feel uncomfortable. Yes even as I’m speaking to you we’re I’m staying in my communities people are afraid of me when they hear that I’m working with the dead body management. So they are afraid of me. So we cannot eat - we cannot share eating together.
00:31:57,634
ANJALI RAO: Well, this was obviously a dangerous assignment. There are very few journalists reporting from there. Did you feel at any point that you may be exposed to the disease?
00:32:07,394
ASHLEY HAMER: I never felt that I was at risk of physical harm, certainly not. There was no risk of public disorder. But, there's no doubt that the paranoia that comes over you, when you realise you are in the middle of a serious disease outbreak – you cannot see it coming. It makes you distrust people. It makes you so aware of everything that you are touching - every footstep that you take, every person who is near you. That gave me a bit of a sense of what the local people are feeling to be told that they are living in the midst of this highly deadly virus, and not knowing where it's coming from and how it can be contracted.
MAN: this sickness is a killer disease, it’s going to kill all of your families. We are totally afraid, this is the main point.
00:33:06,714
ANJALI RAO: Did you get any sense of order at all? Is anyone taking control of the situation, or at least trying to?
00:33:13,514
ASHLEY HAMER: Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors Without Borders are the experts in the field out there. They have established in June the biggest ever Ebola treatment centre. It's an 80-patient treatment facility outside Kailahun town centre. It feels extremely ordered and the planning that has gone into the construction of the place, which was only established in June, has been absolutely meticulous.
00:33:46,954
ANJALI RAO: It must be an eerie feeling to be only 2m away from somebody infected with this horrible disease. What did you feel when you were talking to the patients?
00:33:55,834
ASHLEY HAMER: It is an unnerving feeling to stare into the eyes of somebody who you know is sick with Ebola. You are divided by a plastic fence. They are in the high risk zone and you are in the low risk zone. But because Ebola is transmitted by very close contact with an infected person, physical contact and the sharing of bodily fluids, it is safe to be able to talk to somebody like that. And I met patients who were feeling OK - they were feeling strong. They had been there a couple of weeks, and they were, I hope, on the mend.
00:34:37,834
REPORTER: You are dancing! That's good!
00:34:40,594
MAN: Let's go dancing!
00:34:41,354
REPORTER: You are getting stronger!
00:34:42,514
MAN: Yeah!
00:34:44,354
ASHLEY HAMER: I met a young mother called Hawa Idrissa who was extremely feisty.
00:34:51,114
HAWA IDRISSA: I will not feel happy, because I want to go home to my daughter. I want to see her now.
00:35:01,154
REPORTER: How old is your daughter?
00:35:02,634
HAWA IDRISSA: One year.
00:35:05,114
REPORTER: But she's
OK? No Ebola?
HAWA IDRISSA: No Ebola. No more Ebola! Only I have Ebola.
00:35:19,034
ASHLEY HAMER: I left my number with her, and the day before I left, she called me herself to tell me that she had been discharged and she had gone back to her village. It was fantastic to hear that news.
00:35:29,434
MALCOLM HUGO, MSF PSYCHOLOGIST: Step by step, very slowly, getting back to talking with friends...
00:35:33,394
ASHLEY HAMER: There is an Australian psychologist working out there called Malcolm Hugo, from Adelaide, and he is the main MSF psychologist, counselling people who are operating or sick in the treatment facility.
00:35:49,954
MALCOLM HUGO: As you can imagine, they are in a pretty terrifying situation. They're in a life-threatening situation, and they are surrounded by death and a lot of suffering. So there's obviously some psychological effects.
00:36:07,234
ASHLEY HAMER: He introduced me to a young lad of 18, who was one of the survivors - a chap called Lahai, who was extremely relieved to be going home finally.
00:36:20,234
REPORTER: And how many family members? You have mum, you have dad?
LAHAI: My father and my mother they are there.
00:36:27,074
REPORTER: They are waiting for you?
LAHAI: Now!
00:36:31,874
REPORTER: What will you say to them when you see them?
LAHAI: I’ll teach them about Ebola. How to prevent it themselves.
00:36:40,834
REPORTER: You are lucky, you are strong.
LAHAI: Yeah, yeah, I'm very strong.
00:36:45,834
ASHLEY HAMER: I witnessed a discharge counselling session between Malcolm and Lahai, and then I accompanied Lahai back to his village to meet his mother. Lahai was extremely proud of the certificate of negative status that he had been given, which is issued by MSF for every survivor, because it is very important for local communities - in order to be able to accept the infected person back into the community, they need proof that that person is no longer contagious.
00:37:24,914
MAN: No more Ebola.
00:37:26,114
ASHLEY HAMER: And we had to do this to prove to them that it was OK, and that the person could be brought back into the community sail.
00:37:38,114
NARRATOR: Guinea. The first country to contract Ebola, the epidemic that has
ravaged West Africa for the past nine months. It is the most severe outbreak of
this disease since the virus was discovered forty years ago in the Congo.
00:37:56,674
NARRATOR: We travel to Gueckédou, to learn how this
disease has managed to spread so rapidly throughout this entire region. The
prefecture, in Guinea’s densely forested region, lies on the border between
Liberia and Sierra Leone, and is at the centre of the epidemic.
00:38:17,154
NARRATOR: The boomtown of Guéckédou has a population
of over 220,000. The Kissi ethnic group represent the
majority here, speaking the Kissi and Malinké dialects, as well as French. Arriving here, it is
clear the town is gripped by fear.
00:38:38:14
FIRST MAN: At the moment, the authorities here are telling us that the problem with Ebola is everywhere, and so we need to stay at home. Even at the market, there are cases, you know, it’s nothing like ever before.
00:38:56:01
SECOND MAN: Our prefecture of Guéckédou is being targeted as an Ebola region. What is really bothering us is that everything we do has been put on hold. Public services have been put on hold, all the offices are shut, just because of Ebola. So, that brings a bad reputation to the area.
00:39:12,074
NARRATOR: A bad reputation that Guéckédou could do
well without. But a few months after the appearance of the first cases in
neighbouring villages, Médecins sans Frontières
decided to open their first treatment centre here six months ago.
00:39:31,354
In June, the NGO had considered shutting the centre, as the epidemic appeared to be under control. But a new outbreak of cases in July changed things dramatically.
This makeshift hospital is no longer big enough, and has had to hastily recruit temporary staff to face up to the growing number of cases in the eastern region of the country.
00:40:08:22
WORKER: Here’s the tent, the new tent, we can put at least eight patients in here. Eight patients. Each patient has two buckets, one for vomit and one to go to the toilet in. We change the sheets often, but if the patient excretes or vomits in the sheets we can’t clean them, we burn them straight away.
00:40:43:19
CAROLINA LOPEZ: Unfortunately the only organisation able to put up treatment centres now is MSF, and we can’t do it all. There need to be other organisations that are here, training people and putting up treatment centres. We never thought that it would be this big, or that its scope would make this epidemic such a huge problem. It requires so many resources, and we don’t have enough.
03:45
WORKER: Move, move!
00:41:17,154
NARRATOR: All these efforts are not enough, and the rain certainly doesn’t
help. It’s 7pm, and the day’s work still isn’t finished.
00:41:27,834
NARRATOR: Ambulances are already arriving with seventeen new patients on board.
Seventeen in one go is extremely high, and so the centre has to improvise in
order to treat them.
These patients have arrived from the neighbouring town of Macenta, a hundred kilometres away, having driven for four hours on bumpy roads to get here.
00:41:57,594
At this stage, they are all suspected of having come into contact with Ebola.
The utmost precaution is essential. Only the hospital staff suitably protected
can approach the patients and touch them. The virus is spread by direct contact
with the bodily fluids of someone who has been infected and has symptoms of the
disease, such as fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and headaches.
00:42:27,794
NARRATOR: This tent is just for suspected cases. The new arrivals spend their
first night here, waiting for the results of their screening test.
00:42:56,994
NARRATOR: The next morning, the day team is briefed by the night team. They
must first count the new arrivals, and separate the suspect patients from those
who have already tested positive. Those with positive results must then be
placed into an area for confirmed cases.
00:43:19
DR MODET: Firstly, we have to start from the beginning, we return the confirmed patients and move the suspects towards the room of the confirmed cases. Who’s going to go about moving them there?
00:43:34,114
NARRATOR: Dr Floribert Lomboto
Lomboto is
Congolese, and is a long-term worker with MSF. This morning he is dealing with
the suspected cases that arrived last night. Above all, the teams must avoid
contamination. It’s a long and gruelling process, done under close supervision.
Not even a square inch of skin must be exposed. In line with strict procedure,
multiple pairs of gloves, a mask, a body suit and an apron must be worn. This
is a task that the medics carry out several times a day, since it is difficult
to work in these clothes for more than an hour.
00:44:16,114
NARRATOR: We weren’t allowed into the high-risk areas where the patients stay.
However, Dr Lomboto agreed to take in a camera for us
and film his work, with the permission of the patients.
00:44:46,954
NARRATOR: His first consultation is with a family who arrived the night before
- a young boy, accompanied by his mother and grandmother. It is not uncommon to
see several members of the same family arrive together, having been
contaminated by each other.
00:45:13
FLORIBERT LOMBOTO (off-camera): The child can’t be there, he can’t be with his mother here. Go over there.
00:45:22,194
NARRATOR: The two women are in a critical state. They were probably not quick
enough in getting to the treatment centre. While waiting for the screening test
results, the doctor searches for clinical symptoms of Ebola, such as fever,
abdominal pains and stiff necks.
00:45:47
FLORIBERT LOMBOTO : The child is in a stable condition. Kilkili, over there, is in a bad state.
00:46:07
FLORIBERT LOMBOTO : There isn’t a drug to treat the virus. Some patients are cured by immune recovery, by an immune reaction, and at the same time by the treatments of symptoms that we give, which stabilise the imbalances brought about by the virus.
The people who die are those who hang about, who come along already having major complications. But the people who come here a bit earlier are mostly cured.
00:46:46,714
NARRATOR: The grandmother of the family died during the consultation. The young
mother will not survive either, but her child will be cured after spending a
few days in the centre.
00:47:13,314
NARRATOR: Blood samples from new patients are taken to these experts at an EU
mobile laboratory. Christopher Logue is an English virologist. He is working
here as a volunteer, just like the MSF volunteers.
00:47:29,914
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE: So inside here we have another box, and inside that box, we
have tubes, and inside those tubes are our samples.
00:47:40,594
NARRATOR: Christopher and his colleague need to abide by strict precaution
measures, since the samples they are handling are extremely dangerous. Most of
them probably contain the Ebola virus.
00:47:59,274
NARRATOR: Despite the poor condition of the site, they use the same safety
protocols as a high security laboratory.
00:48:12,754
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE: Because of the nature of how highly pathogenic they are,
every time that somebody works in the cabinet, we have what’s called a buddy, a
buddy system and the buddy works with the operator, to go every step together
so that we know that every step is done safely and there is no potential for
accidents.
00:48:35,834
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE: As routine we don’t test people until they are showing
clinical signs of an Ebola infection, so vomiting, diarrhea,
high temperature, because then you have to test everybody and we don’t have the
infrastructure here to do that.
00:48:53,834
CHRISTOPHER LOGUE: The conditions they
are not like we are used to in our own labs, in England or in Germany, but we
have made it as close to that as possible, so it’s, like this morning I said,
when you we test samples, you get this negatives, it’s just a really good day,
then you know that these people are negatives. When you have a child and it’s positive
it’s a bad day. So it’s ups and downs.
00:49:32,954
NARRATOR: For the volunteers, moments of respite are short. Only a few hours
are spent in the centre here, or back in their accommodation. Even if they are
used to emergency missions, nothing could have prepared them for Ebola. Nobody
can touch each other, and everybody keeps well apart. The virus is on their
minds, all the time.
00:50:06,234
NARRATOR: Michel Komano Komano is an MSF
nurse, and his colleague Cécile Millimouno is from
the Red Cross. These two medical workers do not spend their days at the
patients’ bedsides. They work on the ground to try and contain the epidemic.
Day after day, they travel through villages where deaths from Ebola have been
reported. They are heading to the village of Kolo Bengou, one of the very first places to be hit by the
virus.
00:50:46
MICHEL KOMANO : It was a very hostile village, and it was very hard to get a foothold there. The community did not cooperate with MSF, because rumours run rife throughout these communities. For example, they said that if a patient is taken, they go to the centre and we kill them. So it’s very difficult.
00:51:14
MICHEL KOMANO : The issue is that they don’t know. They knew nothing about this illness or the reasons why they didn’t know about the illness, and so that’s why they’re scared.
MICHEL KOMANO : There have been 25 deaths here, but since then MSF has come back here. We’re thanking God today.
00:51:39
MICHEL KOMANO : In this community, when someone falls ill you need to go and visit them, greet them, pamper them, and reassure them that they’re not alone. We’re really all in this pain together, and that’s what custom dictates that we do. Ebola is a disease through contact, and there are lots of contaminations. If they just fell ill, there would be no assistance, because they weren’t cooperating.
00:52:01,314
NARRATOR: Trust can only be established if patients accept being treated by
MSF. Or when some of them return to their village cured, like this young
mother.
00:52:19
CECILE MILLIMOUNO: Fortunately for us, she arrived at the centre in good time, and she was able to be cured. So now we have to follow up with everyone else who was with her.
00:52:23,554
NARRATOR: Michel Komano and Cécile’s work involves tracking down all
those who have been in contact with a patient or somebody who has died from the
virus. That is the case with this family, having lost one of its parents to
Ebola.
00:52:41,914
Each member of this family has had check-ups on a daily basis for 21 days – which is the incubation period of the virus. If one of them had displayed the slightest symptom, they would have been transferred to the MSF treatment centre in order to avoid contaminating the village.
00:53:04,354
Today they have finished their
observation period. None of them tested positive.
This village has been hit hard by Ebola. Dozens of children have been orphaned, and the loss has taken away from the workforce in the fields, impacting on the economic survival of those who remain. These are just some of the reasons why following up with patients is so vital, and requires such a large taskforce.
00:53:51,954
NARRATOR: In the towns and cities, too, like here in Guéckédou,
huge prevention projects are being undertaken. Motor-taxi drivers are the first
focus group, since they are one of the most exposed.
Faya Antoine attended MSF’s first prevention meeting.
00:55:01,874
FAYA ANTOINE DOUFANGADOUNO: They told us to avoid touching Ebola victims
because this virus is very dangerous.
00:54:23
INTERVIEWER: How do you know if someone is infected before they get on to your taxi?
00:54:30
FAYA ANTOINE: I have chlorine, and before getting onto my bike I have to keep it hygienic – the place where the passenger sits – and I put myself first. I wash my hands thoroughly with chlorine, and you too should wash your hands with the chlorine. I’m afraid, because you know, it’s a very dangerous virus, and we should be afraid of it.
00:55:01,874
NARRATOR: For now preventions like this have been successful in Guéckédou, after months of hard effort. But it has not been
enough, either in quantity or speed. The epidemic can be contained one moment,
but break out again the next.
00:55:24
MARC PONCIN: We’ve never seen such a broad epidemic, we’re discovering new
cases every day. So we’re behind, we’re constantly behind. And every time we
feel that it is under control, there will be a new situation which overtakes
us. It’s not that we’re running behind the epidemic, it’s that the epidemic is
running away ahead of us. It’s sad. Before, epidemics that we’ve seen have been
in relatively remote areas where people didn’t move, and so the virus didn’t
spread outside of these areas. In the three countries around what we call the
‘Parrot Beak of Guinea,’ that is, the borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia,
the same ethnic groups live there. People there don’t respect the borders, they
move about, and often have their field on one side of the border while they
live on the other. So all three countries are affected by the epidemic in more
or less the same way.
00:56:25,114
NARRATOR: Macenta, a nearby town, has recently flared
up with the epidemic. The situation here is very unstable. The people are
poorly informed, and scared of the sudden peak in cases. This is the hospital
where the very first cases of Ebola were treated back in February. The director
of the hospital from that time has since died from the virus.
00:57:01
DR IBRAHIMA KALIL SAVANÉ: As a generalist, we used to carry out our consultations barehanded. Nobody said anything about Ebola, but if you aren’t used to a disease and you don’t see it regularly, then to be honest it can pass by unnoticed. Then people started to come. And when they’re coming now, first of all the resources are being depleted. And it’s an issue, because they see that we have to wear gloves and take other measures. Now, we need to gear ourselves up for how we can deal not only with other illnesses, but also with suspect cases that turn up.
00:57:34,834
NARRATOR: The hospital is simply not equipped to fight an epidemic like this.
They lack even the most basic protection material, not to mention treatment
resources.
00:57:50
MARC PONCIN: With as many medical workers who keep on getting infected, it’s really dramatic and a real problem. But it’s partially as a result of poverty, under-development and the lack of rigour that these countries can have.
00:58:07,074
NARRATOR: To help out, this MSF hospital has set up a centre to pick out
suspected cases. Any confirmed cases are then transferred to the MSF treatment
centre at Guéckédou. In this hospital, a nurse has
just died after treating her patients. Her family is not allowed to go near
her, since only the Red Cross is permitted to prepare bodies for high-security
funerals. Also, an emergency health announcement has formally forbidden the
movement of bodies between localities.
00:58:49
DR MAMADY KEITA: The precautions that we are placing on the corpses are very, very important. Corpses are more infectious than living people. When a person is alive, the virus remains on the inside of the body, and not the outside, but when the person has passed away, the virus comes to the surface of the skin.
00:59:07,954
NARRATOR: For the families, it is not easy to abide by these new practices.
There have been numerous protests, since custom dictates that funeral preparations
should be carried out by the close family of the deceased. Often, their body is
even taken from one village to another, so that whoever knew the person can pay
homage to them.
00:59:35
DR MAMADY KEITA: There are rumours going around that we come along, take out their eyes, take out their tongue, suck out their blood, remove their organs and send them away to be sold. And that it is all a conspiracy among white people. They also say that the chlorine we use for disinfection contains the virus, and so when we disinfect a house we leave the virus there, and the next day the people fall ill. And at times they even make me put my finger in the chlorine and then place it on my tongue, so that they can truly understand that it’s not a deadly toxic substance, but that you can even ingest small amounts of chlorine.
DR MAMADY KEITA: Lift it up, lift it up, don’t pull, lift it up
01:00:18,194
NARRATOR: For the family, on top of the pain of losing a loved one, there is a
long period of uncertainty and worry.
01:00:34
BROTHER: They said ‘have you touched your mum?’ And I said ‘yes.’ While she was being taken away she could walk, and she did walk a bit, but they took her – she was wearing long sleeves – they took her by the shoulders and made her sit. This was when it was raining. When they made her sit down they washed their hands with soap, and then with chlorine, and then again with the chlorine. That’s when they touched her, and apart from that they didn’t touch her.
01:00:55,834
NARRATOR: Understandably, the parents are anxious to know if one or the other
of them is infected.
01:01:08
BROTHER: So now you’re being tested. What assurances can you give us?
01:01:17
OTHER MAN: We’re in a battle – I like to say that it’s like we’re at war. This is what I’ll advise you: when you know the signs, and most of you know the signs, if you take yourself as soon as possible to the centre then you’ll have a high chance of getting cured. If you don’t go there, you’ll contaminate other people and then people close to you. Then you make the chain grow longer and you endanger the whole village, or even the whole country, because then other people will come into contact with them, and you’ve seen what that does. Don’t let Ebola just pass you by.
01:02:01,634
NARRATOR: In Guéckédou, patients are still
continuously flowing through the centre. Some of them turn up of their own
accord, right from the first symptoms, like this woman. This is a sign that the
prevention campaigns are paying off. But progress is slow.
In the neighbouring tent, doctors are faced with a new crisis situation.
01:02:46,754
NARRATOR: A young woman has just died in the tent for confirmed cases. The team
must urgently disinfect and remove her body. She has left behind a child barely
one year old. The little girl also lost her father just a few days ago.
01:03:13
DOCTOR: The daughter is suspected as well, but she doesn’t display symptoms. The mother decided against leaving her daughter with the suspect cases, she said that she would keep her at her bedside but then she died when she had been hospitalised. For the moment, the child doesn’t show any signs that hint at Ebola. She was in contact with her mother right up until she died, so we think that she could have the virus.
01:03:52,994
NARRATOR: For the medical staff, this kind of situation is always hard to
manage.
01:04:06
LAMBERT KONDIANO: The patients come here already in critical states, and we just have to take them in. It happens a lot. It’s hard, but we just have to take them in, mainly so that we can save the children.
01:04:14,554
NARRATOR: Only a few days later the orphaned girl also died of the virus.
01:04:37
CAROLINA LOPEZ: We are trying to do some follow-ups occasionally, if people don’t feel okay or want to talk, et cetera. We have foreign psychologists, so they regularly have the opportunity to talk and meet up with them. We try to be there so they can talk with us, and get support.
01:05:11
MARC PONCIN: Today, we have two centres in Guinea, two in Sierra Leone, and two in Liberia. All our experts are on the case. We have to take risks by making people who are less qualified than in the past come in. It increases our capabilities, but it’s still not enough. And unfortunately no other medical organisation is equipped yet.
01:05:34,994
NARRATOR: Dealing with an Ebola crisis is certainly hard work. Every movement
has to be made with the utmost care to avoid contaminations. For people who die
inside the treatment centre, a makeshift morgue has been made to prepare the
bodies, before the Red Cross can transport them to the cemetery. This all has
to be done with respect to the dignity of the deceased. Each death is
documented, and a photo is presented to their family.
01:06:39
INTERVIEWER: Are you afraid for your own health?
01:06:46
NESTOR OUENDENO – HYGIENIST: Even if we are scared, with the protection measures that we abide by – and we abide by them really closely – I think we can’t say we’re 100% safe, but instead we’re about 98% safe. I’ve been here for five months now. Sometimes I wonder when Ebola will ever end. That’s the question that’s eating away at me every time my head hits the pillow. That’s all.
01:07:41,794
JO DUNLOP: There’s a very negative narrative around Sierra Leone. It’s associated with civil war and blood diamonds. When I arrived the Reality of it was quite different. There is just so much life
What’s this style?
01:07:58,314
STREET WOMAN: Short style, and then freak on your head
01:08:02,034
JO DUNLOP: The way people dress demonstrates their resilience and resourcefulness and a vibrancy. That is what I found really inspiring. And I started to have a fashion blog and it just became quite addictive taking photos of people and then everything completely changed in Sierra Leone.
01:08:27,714
JO DUNLOP: I arrived in Sierra Leone about three years ago. When Ebola spread
to Freetown, I was working as the communications managers for King Sierra Leone
partnership, a global health project based at Connaught hospital.
01:08:43,274
Oh! You’re a fine, fine man.
01:08:46,874
There’s a sense of community and people are fun. So that’s what hooked me, I think, in the beginning.
01:08:59,714
NEWSREADER: West African health ministers are holding an emergency meeting to discuss ways to stop the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history.
01:09:07,234
NEWSREADER: Ebola has now claimed more lives in SL then in any other country.
01:09:13,634
Sierra Leone took this very unfair turn that no one was expecting. The disease
just spread exponentially, and it moved around the country like this horrible
menacing monster. And then it came to Freetown, this urban environment where I
think there’s over a million people living and has just claimed so many lives.
01:09:50,394
So after Ebola started, my focus switched to Ebola, as did everybody else’s.
But I tried to sort of keep the blog going and focus on the people who were
working on the Ebola response
01:10:14
AFRICAN HOSPITAL WORKER: I have to work in the unit because I want to save my people.
01:10:12,194
JO DUNLOP: It’s been absolutely inspiring to be amongst a group of frontline workers, who are so brave and courageous. I’m just absolutely in awe of them. Most of them are Sierra Leonians. There’s a nurse in the hospital where I work and she lost 17 family members . I don’t know how they get up every morning and go back to work. They’re just extraordinary. Along with the nurses there’s also the cleaners, these guys go in and mop the floors and clean dead bodies. A lot of them have been thrown out of their homes, their wives have left them. I remember talking to one of my favourite cleaners who’s just wonderful. He said, I’m really lonely at the moment, I’ve never lived on my own, my wife has moved out, she’s taken my kid, and she said she’d move back in when Ebola is finished.
01:11:37,634
JO DUNLOP: So one of the very inspiring characters that I’ve met has been WILL POOLEY who is a British nurse.
01:11:47,634
WILL POOLEY: As a nurse, you want to have the biggest impact you can, and here it’s easier to have that impact because there’s such a lack of trained staff. Initially I didn’t have a huge fear, but then, after a few days, when you start seeing colleagues die and you see the way patients are suffering when they’re sick then the fear creeps up.
01:12:17,754
A police convoy escorting the British man arrived at the royal free hospital
last night. From Sierra Leone to north London, every care was taken to protect
the patient, and prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
01:12:30,674
WILL POOLEY: I knew the possibility that I was gonna die. I felt a little embarrassed, I suppose, that all of this was for me
01:12:41,194
JO DUNLOP: He very very quickly got medicaved. And he was treated at the Royal Free in London which has a big infectious disease unit, treated by the best doctors, and he made a miraculous recovery in ten days, I think.
01:12:56,874
WILL POOLEY: I had a lot of things in my favour, including, being evacuated and
being offered experimental therapy.
01:13:03,954
JO DUNLOP: While he was away, his colleague Nancy, I was keeping in touch with her because she was devastated by what had happened to Will. Two weeks later, she became infected.
01:13:19,724
WILL POOLEY: my parents came in and said they had some bad news, and told me about Nancy’s infection. That was probably the worst moment of the whole experience, I suppose.
01:13:43,034
JO DUNLOP: It was so under resourced. People were being given water and panadols. A week later she died, which was devastating.
01:13:58,274
WILL POOLEY: And that would have been a week of real suffering.
01:14:06,074
So Nancy you’ve lost a lot of your colleagues and your friends, what makes you keep coming back?
01:14:17
NANCY: I have that faith, that I’m free from Ebola. I will not go far from Ebola and here we will get Ebola finished in this country. I have the faith, that’s all.
01:14:26,674
WILL POOLEY: So the gaps between relatively poor people and relatively rich people..there has to be a way to stop that making the
difference between life and death.
01:15:04,314
JO DUNLOP: I was the first person in New South Wales to be tested for Ebola.
It’s not a very nice feeling. I ended up being in hospital for about four
hours, while I waited on my test results. I tested negative and I was released
home for Christmas.
01:15:18,914
JOAN DUNLOP: But even when she came home for a visit, some relatives were very
standoffish, thinking ‘are you safe, can I get ebola
from you?’ So its been worrying for our extended
family, but my husband and I have been reassured by JO DUNLOPthat
she’ll be okay and whenever she rang she would say ‘mum I will not get Ebola,
because I understand how it’s transmitted. ‘
01:15:52,394
JO DUNLOP: Ive never been scared that I’m gonna catch
Ebola. It’s very infectious but in a way it’s not as contagious as we what we
think.
01:16:00,874
JOAN DUNLOP: When Joanna said she was going to go back for six more months my initial reaction was ohh do you really have to go back, do you really need to go back? There’s always the doubt of things happening over there.
01:16:32,954
JO DUNLOP: coming back has been really interesting, it’s quite different here
now. It feels like there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Back at Connaught
hospital this is where I was working at the heart of the outbreak.
Thank God!
01:16:53,794
Yeah, case numbers are coming right down. I think in the last week there’s been
about 70 cases. Two months ago there were between 300 and 500 cases a week.
01:17:05,314
- Hello!
- Hello!
-Don’t touch!
01:17:08,674
-How are you?
- Yeah I’m fine
JO DUNLOP: It’s really good to see Will. He’s back here still working on the Ebola outbreak
01:17:17,674
WILL POOLEY:
I knew I was going to come back, there was no question about that. I never
wanted to leave Sierra Leone, it was only because I got sick
01:17:25,594
JO DUNLOP: So what’s it like here, compared to what it was at the end of last
year when things were really really terrible and
cases were still going up?
01:17:33,434
WILL POOLEY: Yeah, it’s a lot quieter, we’ve got a handful of patients inside,
but likely they’ll test negative haven’t had a positive case for a couple of
days.
01:17:43,474
JO DUNLOP: I think a lot of people say we’re on this bumpy road to the end.
01:17:49,594
WILL POOLEY: yeah, but when it is announced its going to be a good time to be
here.
01:17:51,554
JO DUNLOP: what are we going to do?
01:17:54,554
WILL POOLEY: Have a big party!
01:17:55,634
JO DUNLOP: Its going to be amazing, isn’t it?
01:17:57,914
WILL POOLEY: There’s going to be a lot of body contact probably.
01:18:05,154
JO DUNLOP: He’s a good dancer
01:18:10,954
WILL POOLEY: I saw the very best of what people can do, with people like Nancy, just the humanity and the amazing courage. I saw how wonderful people can be.
01:18:25,834
JO DUNLOP: I guess it’s been a huge moment in my life one that I’m going to
remember as the incredibly strong people. I don’t think their spirit was ever
broken. That was something that will always stay with you and you can draw
inspiration from. I have friends here and people I love and I wanted to come
back and see the end of Ebola.