Visitors tell of Ebola struggles in Sierra Leone

The Rev. Father Peter Konteh lives next door to death. From the yard of his house in Freetown, the Catholic priest watches a procession of corpses arrive at King Tom Cemetery, one of the largest in Sierra Leone.

Workers in protective gear load a man believed to have Ebola onto an ambulance in Kenema, Sierra Leone. Last week, two men from Sierra Leone visited a New Jersey relief office with grim reports on the virus that has killed 3.400 in West Africa. (TANYA BINDRA / Associated Press)Read more

by Melissa Dribben, Inquirer Staff Writer

Published Oct. 5, 2014, 3:01 a.m. ET

The Rev. Father Peter Konteh lives next door to death.

From the yard of his house in Freetown, the Catholic priest watches a procession of corpses arrive at King Tom Cemetery, one of the largest in Sierra Leone.

"On a day when the government reported three more deaths from Ebola, I saw 10 bodies brought in to be buried," said Konteh.

This evidence that the epidemic's toll has been underreported is among a host of terrible truths the 48-year-old priest shared during a visit last week to the Lumberton, Burlington County, headquarters of the Healey International Relief Foundation, which is supporting efforts to combat the Ebola epidemic. He was accompanied by Ishmeal Alfred Charles, the program director for the Healey foundation in Sierra Leone.

He has seen gravediggers too drunk to bury bodies deeply enough to fend off hungry wildlife, he said. Security guards, charged with enforcing quarantines, take bribes, or abandon their posts to visit girlfriends or buy food at the market.

Angry villagers, believing they were lied to, threatening to attack a hospital where their faith healer was being treated for Ebola.

Friends consumed by this voracious disease as it flames through homes, destroying thousands in its path.

Before Ebola hit, the Healey foundation was donating about $1 million a year and coordinating with several other aid agencies, running an orphanage, counseling war victims, and building health-care centers in 50 communities in Sierra Leone. Over the summer, it shifted its focus to the epidemic.

The virus, spread through contact with bodily fluids, has claimed more than 3,400 in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.

Soap, water, and facts

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case diagnosed in the United States and said that the man, Thomas Duncan, a Liberian who flew in from Monrovia, may have exposed 50 others before he was admitted to a Dallas hospital.

Back home, Konteh and Charles have been arming the public with the only defensive weapons available: chlorine, buckets, soap and water, and information. But the instinct for human contact is so powerful, Konteh said, that he recently ignored his own advice.

"I came across a friend I hadn't seen in a while. He'd just come back from a run. We hugged each other, then realized what we'd done." Recoiling, wide-eyed, the men knew they just could have made a fatal mistake. Neither turned out to be infected, but the experience still haunts them, Konteh said.

"We are a touching culture. Shaking hands is a big, big thing."

Wearing T-shirts that warn in capital letters across the back "AVOID TOUCHING DEAD BODY," and "STOP DENIAL, BE ALERT," Konteh, Charles, and their coworkers venture into communities where ignorance and fear have become the virus' deadly allies.

"You tell people again and again the messages that will save their lives and the lives of their families," said Charles. "But even now, people believe it is not real."

'Wiped out'

A small number of Sierra Leoneans hold religious beliefs that make them suspicious of traditional health care. (About 71 percent of the population is Muslim, 10 percent Catholic, and 18 percent other Christian faiths.)

And in a nation where more than half the citizens are illiterate, it is hard to get the message out, he said. Even educated citizens sometimes are reluctant to believe that Ebola has struck home.

Last month, Konteh said, a local Catholic schoolteacher's son came down with a fever. Although hospital workers warned that he might have Ebola, the young man, who was a nurse, insisted that he was suffering from malaria and went home.

"The entire family was wiped out," Konteh said, including two brothers who were in law school.

Even those who know well the dangers of exposing themselves to others' bodily fluids can slip up.

Modupeh Cole, a well-respected doctor, was standing near the entrance to Connaught Hospital in Freetown when a patient walked in and collapsed. "Instinctively, he ran to catch him," said Konteh, who knew the doctor well.

That night when Cole returned home, he told his family, "I did something foolish," and quarantined himself in a room.

"Two days later," Konteh said, "he came down with a fever." Cole was taken to an isolation unit operated by Doctors Without Borders, where he died Aug. 13, one of at least four doctors felled so far by the epidemic in Sierra Leone.

The nation, with a population of six million, had been gradually rebuilding after an 11-year civil war that ended in 2002.

During the war, Charles was captured by the rebels and forced to join their army. He was only 14. He eventually escaped and went on to earn a diploma in peace and conflict studies from the University of Sierra Leone. During this trip to the U.S., he testified before the Senate about the need for more aid to combat Ebola and its collateral damage.

"I fear this is going to be worse than the war," he said. Schools are closed, companies are laying off staff, and so many farmers have died that there is no one left to harvest crops.

"Households," he said, "are struggling with food shortages and increased costs due to panic buying."

Desperate to contain the epidemic, Sierra Leone's government has quarantined large sections of the country. Still, infection rates continue to soar.

Thousands of children, orphaned by Ebola, have been shunned out of fear that they may carry the disease. Rumors have spread that the disease is spread by poisoned soap or cured by salt water. Conspiracy theories persist that the epidemic is merely a government ploy to steal organs. Last week, police imposed a curfew in a northern province where people were celebrating false reports that the epidemic was over.

Travel is restricted. Checkpoints have been set up where health-care workers take the temperature of anyone passing by.

'My biggest stress'

When Charles came here on his two-week trip, leaving his wife and their two daughters, 10 and 9 months behind, he said, "my biggest stress is if anyone gets sick while I am away, the health system is not functional."

Two days before his testimony, the U.S. gave $3.5 million to support the Sierra Leone Red Cross, a fraction of what the United Nations estimates is needed.

Robert Healey Sr., the South Jersey foundation's chairman, said that while his organization is small, he plans to combine efforts with others to help.

An entrepreneur who made a fortune in the high-end yacht business, Healey said he became interested in Sierra Leone after meeting religious leaders from there who told him about the damage wrought by the civil war.

"I don't know how God works," he said, "but maybe God brought Ebola upon us to teach that we have to take care of people."

Meanwhile, Konteh said, the scourge has outpaced the country's ability to cope. As part of the public health campaign, citizens are urged to call 117, the emergency response center, when they suspect someone has Ebola or when they see a dead body.

Yet after finding a corpse in the street near his house, Konteh called the center repeatedly, asking for someone to remove it.

"No response," he said, shaking his head. "It took 21/2 days."

Konteh and Charles returned to Sierra Leone on Tuesday to resume their efforts. Bidding goodbye to his friends at the foundation, Konteh indulged in "the luxury of a handshake" and a few hugs.

"If I don't live to tell the story," he told them, "please tell it for me."

Here is a list of nonprofits directly helping to combat Ebola in West Africa.

Healey International Relief Foundation

573 Eayrestown Rd.

Lumberton, N.J. 08048

www.hirf.net

Wellbody Alliance

c/o Next Mile Project

2 Atlantic Ave., 4th Floor

Boston, Mass. 02110

www.wellbodyalliance.org

Last Mile Health