Oct 29, 2015 In the aftermath of a two-year Ebola epidemic, Sierra Leone is taking steps to curb stigmatization against Ebola survivors. Around the country, billboards and posters beam messages such as “Ebola survivors are heroes and heroines”.
In a bid to counter fear and paranoia, the government-sponsored messages stress the complete recovery of the survivors. However, the life threatening relapse of a Scottish nurse has revived concerns about the health status of the survivors.
Twenty six year old Musu Allie, who survived the virus, recounts her ordeals saying:
“When I was sick, I went to the bathroom and I became unconscious. I called the 117 Ebola hotline when I came to, because at that time all my neighbors had abandoned me,”
Abdul Hassan Kamara, another survivor, said:
“We were looking at this outbreak as a very dangerous sickness, so the types of medicine that we were using to help fight this sickness made some of us to get aftermath sickness happening in almost 90 percent of the survivors. Some of the survivors were not having any hearing problem now they are having hearing problem due to the hard treatment, some with good eye sight but now they can’t see properly all this as a result of the hard drugs given to us at the ETU (Ebola Treatment Unit),”
Guinea is the only West Africa country with new confirmed cases of Ebola. Liberia has been declared Ebola-free while Sierra Leone has gone 25 days without a case.
Sierra Leone’s National Ebola Response Center has however assured the general public that further research on such anomalies was underway.