The Forgotten of Ebola Crisis

It’s one of those mornings. Crisp on the account of last night’s rains, sunshine peering through the deep greyness of the skies announcing a looming storm to descend on Monrovia any moment now. Waking up in the morning usually meant excitement for work, to be productive and contribute to ending the Ebola crisis. But for the past two weeks I have been dreading it. I fear waking up every morning and finding her dead body sprawled on the side of the road, while people continue walking by, paying little if any attention to her.

I don’t know her. Not her name or where she comes from or what her story is. I first saw her two weeks ago. She was there lying on the road on the main intersection close to where I live. And old granny in a torn green dress looking as old as she is, half her skinny naked body exposed and deep infected wounds marking both sides of her head. Lying on the road motionless and at risk of being run over by the first inattentive driver. That’s how she got her head wounds. She was a victim of hit and run.

Sights of poverty are not uncommon when living in developing countries. And those of us living and working here are not immune to them. Sometimes we can bear it, sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we can help and sometimes we can’t. This is one of those times when all you can be is outraged at the way this world is and at your own inadequacy.

We stopped, my colleague and I. Next to her were standing two young men from the nearby slum, themselves looking shabby indicating their own struggle to survive. They don’t know her either. She is nameless and abandoned. She has to be someone’s mother, grandmother, sister and aunty. The young men were appalled by her desperate condition. They tried to help. They bathed her a few times, claiming she does not look like she has Ebola. She doesn’t look like she has it, but they have not protected themselves for ‘just in case’ either. But they helped still. Many don’t. Scared of anyone not looking 100%. It could be Ebola. Indeed, it could. They moved her to a bus station so she can be sheltered from rain and sun.

The elderly in Liberia and many other parts of Africa are taken care of by their children. There are no adequate pension schemes to provide for one’s retirement, no decent social protection or elderly people’s homes. It’s a responsibility of your children to take care of you. Not everyone has this luxury though.

With my colleague we arrange food and water for her since the day we saw her there. We bought her a T-shirt. It’s still nothing close to dignifying the way she still lays there. We called upon what you would think are responsible authorities. They seem to be under too much pressure by Ebola crisis. No one is responsible for her, no one claims her, no one helps. We called the hospitals, but themselves struggling with devastating effects of Ebola, they currently do not provide any longer-term hospitalization (which was explained as being longer than a few hours). I didn’t even know that. They were supposed to have been fully reopened and this was praised as such an achievement. Both facilities were infected due to the lack of infection prevention and control and were closed down for disinfection and out of operation for some time.

We called the radios. Did we really think that it would create some kind of public outrage? That someone would come to her aid? In the time when people are dying in hundreds every day from Ebola and from all the other diseases?

Now we are at a loss. We don’t know what to do anymore. We’ve become useless.

A week ago she could still sit up to eat. But she is getting weaker by the day. Few days ago she could not sit up anymore and was eating while lying down on the bare ground. She has not been eating for two days now.

Some well-wishers come by and say “great job” or “thank you” for feeding her. But, it’s not great, not even a bit. Great would be something completely different, such as finding her more permanent care, health care, so she could recover and be well and continue living. She isn’t living, she is only existing.

And at the end of it, when she dies the Ebola burial team will come to collect her as now all the bodies are considered potential Ebola cases. Only then will someone care. But only enough to remove her lifeless body. And she will be buried in an unmarked grave or perhaps cremated, nameless and forgotten, gone without a claim, added to the statistics of deaths.

Worse of all… she is not the only one. Unofficial WHO estimates are 3,8 non-Ebola deaths for every Ebola death. And this figure could prove to be even higher.

This is the kind of world we have created for ourselves. A world that doesn’t care about its own. Where people are not considered our own, but rather yours or theirs and very rarely mine. She does have a name and even though we don’t know it, she is one of our own.

And we have failed.