When you’re living in Sierra Leone and you start coming down with a fever, headache and aching joints, one word is on everyone’s mind: Ebola! But the symptoms are also common to other diseases including malaria – the country’s deadliest disease for children. Anecdotally, the Ebola outbreak also makes people with more… Read more →←
Author: Yolanda Romero
In Sierra Leone, social mobilization teams have been spreading the message out about how best to protect yourself from the Ebola virus. One large billboard sponsored by UNICEF and the Sierra Leone Football Association is typical: promoting hand washing and the 117 Ebola hotline. Elsewhere, what are often quite graphic posters, explain… Read more →←
Twenty students sit in a classroom in Freetown listening to a trainer. It should be a common scene, but the topic, Ebola and their ages (mostly 40s), makes this a different type of lesson. The students are all health workers, including nurses and doctors, learning how to prevent infection in a highly contagious environment. The training… Read more →←
The normally bustling streets of Freetown are empty, silent. From time to time a vehicle appears on the deserted road with the emergency lights on and keeps on going. It’s 7 am on the 19th of September, the first day of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) house-to-house sensitization campaign in Sierra Leone – or Ouse to Ouse Tock as… Read more →←