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https://theconversation.com/ebola-survivors-struggle-to-return-to-normal-lives-what-i-found-out-in-sierra-leone-and-liberia-281678>
"During the Ebola epidemic of 2014 to 2016, Musu, a resident of Monrovia,
Liberia contracted the Ebola virus along with her husband, five sons and
daughter.
A few weeks later, six members of her family died. Musu and her youngest son
survived. Since then, their lives have not been the same. Her husband was the
family’s sole breadwinner. Now a widow and a single parent, Musu struggles to
make ends meet. As she put it, “There is no one here to help besides God. No
boyfriend. No father. I am the father, the mother, the uncle, and the brother.
At the place we are renting, we can’t even find food to eat.”
Musu is one of the many survivors who recovered from the world’s largest Ebola
epidemic. The epidemic started as a localised disease outbreak in the village
of Meliandou in Guinea but spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Over the course of three years, the disease infected 28,600 people.
Approximately 11,000 of them died while 17,000 survived.
On 9 June 2016, the World Health Organization announced the official end of the
Ebola epidemic in Liberia.
Compared to the widespread media coverage of the epidemic when it started, news
reports on its aftermath have been limited. As a result, very few people know
that Ebola survivors have struggled to continue with their lives since the end
of the epidemic.
These survivors include widows like Musu, orphans who are now homeless, and
thousands of people who are now blind or have permanent vision problems.
I am a social demographer who studies health and population trends. My recent
book
Life After Epidemics: Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of
Recovery documents many of these experiences. Based on interviews with 250
Ebola survivors in Liberia and Sierra Leone, I set about trying to understand
why many survivors live in worse conditions than before the epidemic, and
what’s preventing them from returning to their normal lives.
Understanding these issues is a first step towards developing solutions to the
problems currently faced by Ebola survivors. Learning about their experiences
can prevent these problems from occurring among survivors of future epidemics."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
