An account from our partners at Nehnwaa Child Survival Project, Ganta United Method Hospital, Liberia.

A community meeting encouraging pregnant women to know the signs of Ebola and seek early testing and treatment at medical centers if Ebola is suspected.Awareness on survival habits.

Onset of the Ebola crisis in Liberia

The deadly and highly infectious Ebola Virus which surfaced in Lofa County from Guinea in March 2014, did not leave any segment of the counties in Liberia untouched. Ganta, on the outskirts of Nimba County, was highly hit, leading to countless deaths. As a result, no one dared to visit the area, much less allow patients to seek medical attention at the few health facilities in the capital which were only in partial operation at that time.

The fate of pregnant women in Ebola riddled Liberia

What happens to pregnant women in these circumstances? Government mandate requires women to deliver with the help of a trained birth attendant. However, in the face of the fear of Ebola, many women were unable to do so. During one of our visits to the community we spoke with a woman who delivered with an untrained birth attendant. This after all efforts to secure her an ambulance ride to a hospital had failed.

As she told her story, she bowed her head with a river of tears flowing from her cheek:

“My name is Oretha Saye; I am a mother of four children. After the efforts that were made by my husband and few of his friends who risked their precious lives to have me transported to the nearest [health] facility had failed, my train of thought was that I too was on my way to joining my many friends and my close relatives who had lost their lives as a result of this strange and fatal virus. I therefore wish to firstly thank God for working on the hearts of my husband and his friends as well as the traditional birth attendant for withstanding the test of time to save me and my baby’s lives. Otherwise, “I would have been gone by now.”

Hope in the face of adversity

By this time, I observed that she was on the verge of weeping. As such, I tried in my weak way to comfort her. But much to my surprise, she cleared her throat twice and coughed intentionally.

“I want the international community to concentrate on every aspect of health and not only on Ebola. As doing so would be detrimental to the survival of mankind on planet earth,” she concluded, and then stood up and left.”

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