By Jenneh Brima
Politico newspaper has launched a campaign to save a hopeless young Ebola survivor, Ibraim Sankoh. The 4-year-old boy is currently languishing in a ward in the Port Loko Government Hospital in the northern Sierra Leonean Port Loko District, where he has been waiting for what destiny holds for him.
Sankoh lost his parents and siblings to the virus which left him totally blind on one of his eyes after recovering from the disease.
Doctors said his second eye, which is only partially blind, could be restored but he needs to be evacuated. But Sanko is just one in a growing list of cases, as urgent and severe as his case is.
As the Ebola epidemic retreats, the stories of victims and communities are gradually shifting focus. Survivors who fought and beat the disease are confronted by unexpected issues. The stories differ from individual to individual and communities to communities. But they all have one problem - neglect.
Most of those who have survived the Ebola virus are experiencing various health related problems, lamented Yusuf Kabba, National Chairman of the Sierra Leone Association of Ebola Survivors (SLAES).
Kabba narrated growing tales of blindness, deafness, dumbness, bodily pains and other health irregularities such as complications in the menstrual cycle of female survivors.
Mohamed Alie, 29, was a nursing student at the Connaught Hospital where he contracted the virus while on internship. At the initial stage of his recovery, Alie was contending with eyesight problems. But now, he said, he had to deal with swollen wrist every week.
Survivors also complain stigmatization, including from their neighbours and even family members.
At the Lompa Community in Waterloo, in the Western Rural District, a group of about 50 survivors recently gathered under the patronage of Social Workers Sierra Leone, a community volunteer organisation which, since the unset of the outbreak, has been involved in sensitisation on how to avoid the virus. The organisation has now re-focused its attention on the lives of survivors.
At Lompa, survivors narrated their stories - how they contracted the virus and how they have been coping with life outside the hospital. Their stories, almost similar, resonated stigmatisation at all levels.
Yet all of them got the virus through families and loved ones. Some were infected by tenants and even landlords and landladies. But thesemen and women, interestingly, are facing discrimination from loved ones, like 30-year-old AdamaFornah who has been left to take care of her son.She is now a single parent after her husband abandoned them following her discharge from treatment center.
“We feel abandoned, we need medical services,” said Kabba of the survivors association, who lost seven family members including their “breadwinner.” The 27-year-old was on his way to enter college when the Ebola broke out.
Kabba’s landlord, he said, has “cunningly” asked him out of his house. The government, by every indication, seems powerless to provide answers to all the questions.And the survivors tend to understand this, except for the unexplained issues around medical complications resulting from the viral infections.
Tina Davies, Coordinator for Ebola Survivors at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs, told Politico that there were plans to set up clinics for the treatment of Ebola survivors at district levels. But she wouldn’t comment further on the details, only saying they were still at the planning stage. She however urged SLAES, the survivors’ association, to bring its members together and forward their case to the ministry for psychosocial support.
And in January, deputy minister of health, Madina Rahman, told a batch of newly discharged survivors that government had made provisions for complications arising from their side effects at the Connaught Hospital.
Sister Cecelia Kamara, head of the Ebola isolation unit at Connaught, confirmed this and spoke of a high number of reported cases.
And according to Kabba of SLAES, there was a clinic for such cases at the 34 Military Hospital, although they only provide services for survivors who went through the treatment center there.
But an Ebola survivor who works at Connaught, and who asked for anonymity, denied that there were any such provisions there. He claimed his own situation left him with asthma and that he was struggling for medication.
© Politico 11/02/15
