Save The Children health workers readying to enter the Ebola wards
By Mustapha Kamara
The British charity, Save The Children has yesterday responded to severe criticism that it has bungled the running of the Ebola treatment centre it was contracted to manage by the UK government.
The 80-bed centre – plus a 12-bed specialist facility for medical workers who get infected – was opened on 5 November at Kerry Town amid expectations it would turn the Ebola fight around, a fight in which the virus currently has the upper hand.
The head of Sierra Leone’s Ebola Response Centre, Palo Conteh had told a press conference that Kerry Town was a challenge. “We are still grappling…to get [Kerry Town] up to the maximum 80 [beds]. Save The Children, they do not have the expertise. That is something we must all accept hands up and say the Brits got it wrong with Kerry Town – handing over that facility to Save The Children who have never run an Ebola facility”.
Save’s Global Humanitarian Director, Michael Von Bertele told a news conference yesterday that the criticisms had emanated from “a misunderstanding” of their role.
“About 10 weeks ago we were approached by the government of the United Kingdom and we were asked to take on the running of the treatment centre at Kerry Town” he said.
“When we were asked to take on the centre we made it absolutely clear that this was new business for us…We have never run frontline health services at this scale” Von Bertele told journalists.
“We said that with the support of the WHO, who had some Cuban doctors and nurses available and with the support of the [British] National Health Service, we would give it our best shot. And that’s what we’ve done” he said.
He said they were very clear that they would be “starting from scratch and it would involve us training quite a lot of people in the country but we could only start when the centre was complete”.
Bertele said once the facility was handed over to them they needed to recruit and train staff both inside Sierra Leone and around the world.
“We set out a plan that involved us may be taking just two or three patients in the first week while we understood the complexity of working in a new environment with a new disease, and that is what we did,” he said.
Bertele said they had now opened 40 beds to patients with 25 already occupied. He said the remaining 40 beds would be open later this year.
“I am confident that we are now on track to get to 80 beds by the end of this month [December]” he assured.
“We always said that we would scale up slowly. It’s always difficult to train people who’ve never worked in this environment to work in the Personal Protective Equipment they have to wear to go through all the procedures and most importantly to know how to manage a complex disease like Ebola” he said.
“We had to recruit staff locally – 250 people of them. We had to recruit people from overseas to come and work here. So we are asking people to come and work here put their own lives in danger, and we have an absolute responsibility to make sure they are safe”, the Save humanitarian chief told Politico.
He said they also planned to open two more laboratories “in the coming week” and had received a strong contingent of British NHS doctors and nurses with more nurses expected from Sierra Leone’s health ministry.
“The British govt may have asked lots of other people to do this but no one would say ‘yes’. We are the only charity that said ‘yes we will do it’. The government of Sierra Leone knew that when they approached us” he went on.
“I think it will be fair to say that we didn’t have all of the expertise to do this but we took it on because there was the moral responsibility to do it. If no one else was prepared to do it we felt that we could put together a team and give it a good shot and we’ve done that.”
“It’s been really difficult, it’s been challenging, it’s been very stressful. But I think that is also one of the most morally compelling things we have done as an organisation. It won’t make the difference immediately to the lives of large numbers of people but it will make a very big difference to the lives of a small number of people, and in the long term Save The Children aims to make an impact for thousands if not millions of children in west Africa” Bertele said.
Interim Director at Kerry Town treatment Centre in Freetown, Bob Mac Gillvray said the centre had admitted about 70 confirmed Ebola patients and treated and discharged many others. “It has been a difficult challenge for us… but we are exactly where we said we would be and we are on track to be one of the best treatment centre that is providing better clinical support for Ebola victims in the country” Gillvray said.
He assured Sierra Leoneans that his organisation was up to fight and would end the Ebola in Sierra Leone.
© Politico 09/12/14
