Volunteers are risking their lives to stop Ebola
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
How are Congolese volunteers responding to the current Ebola outbreak?
Now we move to the frontline Congolese volunteers who are risking their lives to help treat and contain the current Ebola outbreak there. But they and their efforts aren't always welcome or appreciated. Let's find out more from Chief Africa Correspondent with the New York Times, Declan Walsh. Declan, good morning to you. Thank you for being with us.
Morning, Clare.
You went there, I was looking at your fascinating report last night. It is a desperate situation in many ways, but there are those people you met who are doing their best to help. And as I mentioned there, their efforts are not always welcome. Tell us what you saw.
That's right.
Why were burial teams and safe burials emphasized as critical to containment?
Yeah, it's kind of hard to find a bright spot in an Ebola outbreak, particularly one as serious as this one. All the indications are that this is already the third largest Ebola outbreak on record, and it could become, experts think, the biggest ever. And a big part of the problem is that it was detected so late Experts now think it may have started circulating as early as January, but it was only declared in May. That means the effort to push it back is way, way behind. The efforts are way behind the outbreak. And so in this frantic scramble that's going on to contain this outbreak, one of the key things that has to happen are what they call safe and dignified burials of people who've died from Ebola, because the body of a person who has just died from the disease is extremely contagious.
And unfortunately, local burial customs in many parts of Africa and certainly in eastern DR Congo often involve mourners you know touching the remains of their loved one before the body is placed in the ground. So I I came across these groups of Red Cross volunteers who are leading the way, really, in carrying out these burials, which involves both retrieving the bodies of people who've just died, disinfecting them, placing them into a heavy-duty body bag, and then eventually leading the funeral and placing the body safely in the ground.
And so some of those local communities and mourners are deeply distrustful of this entire process, aren't they?
Yeah, they've kind of borne the brunt of public... frustration and fear over the outbreak because the outbreak was spreading for so long. And, you know, people were dying in these communities and they didn't really know why. They thought it was malaria. They thought it was typhoid fever. But people did notice that, you know, people were dying in greater numbers. They couldn't explain why. So that when it was finally declared as an Ebola outbreak,
What community mistrust and conspiracy theories are hampering Ebola response?
you had this sort of surge of frustration about it. You had a lot of conspiracy theories that began to spread that either people denied that the disease was real or they claimed that it was some sort of concocted conspiracy between local health workers and even foreign aid workers in order to make money from the outbreak. But the people who are on the ground are these people who go into the communities, retrieve the bodies and come out. What was happening particularly in the early weeks of the outbreak is these burial teams would be stoned or insulted or threatened as they went to retrieve these bodies. We were at hospitals where crowds of people gathered at the gates and they tried to retrieve bodies from the hospital in order to bury them themselves.
And so, you know, it really struck me that, you know, here were these people who are just volunteers there. You know, they get a sort of a daily stipend for some of the work that they're doing. But I mean, they're effectively unpaid volunteers and they're just carrying out this incredibly risky work at the forefront of this outbreak and they're facing a double danger. They're facing the danger from this disease that as yet doesn't have a vaccine or a cure. And then they're also facing the danger from their own communities who are sort of taking out their frustrations on them.
Now, you went into an Ebola ward in one of the hospitals and gosh, the facility was very rudimentary.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:10
2
How are Congolese volunteers responding to the current Ebola outbreak?
0:10–0:47
3
Why were burial teams and safe burials emphasized as critical to containment?
0:47–3:05
4
What community mistrust and conspiracy theories are hampering Ebola response?
3:05–5:10
5
How are volunteer burial teams being attacked or threatened on the frontlines?
5:10–8:42
6
What did Declan Walsh observe inside under-resourced Ebola wards?
8:42–9:40