Ebola's children

Across Sierra Leone, the Ebola epidemic is affecting children in a number of ways. Children have been orphaned, some have contracted the virus, sadly some children have died from the disease. Children who have so far managed to escape direct contact with the virus have been victims of pervasive fear and no longer play with one another. Large public gatherings of any kind have been banned to help stop the spread of the disease, but this is hurting incomes and educations, and will soon begin to affect nutrition as well. In today’s blog, we tell the story of four children - Hawa, Salay, Marie and Christian – and how Ebola has affected each of them.

Hawa

Hawa Dabo crouches outside her home in Kenema, Sierra Leone, and stares at the ground. She recently lost her stepfather to Ebola. Unfortunately, her family is not just dealing with grief and the threat of infection at the moment. Like many families of Ebola victims, Hawa and her siblings now find themselves ostracised by their community.

Across Sierra Leone and West Africa, fear of Ebola is leading communities to turn their backs on their most affected members. Community mistrust of health workers and people who serve in burial teams is rife, and fear of health workers has led people to avoid seeking treatment in health clinics, further increasing the likelihood of infecting their own family.

Hawa insists to anyone who will listen that her stepfather died of stress, not Ebola. Unfortunately her neighbours and friends know better.

Health workers and members of burial teams have been evicted from their homes due to their association with the virus. Family members and property alike have been tossed into the street, and Ebola orphans have found themselves truly abandoned due to the all-encompassing terror.

Hawa’s stepfather had been the main breadwinner for their large extended family. Now that the family is tainted with the stigma of Ebola, the market stall Hawa’s mother and aunts run to earn a bit of extra money is also failing.

Even for those traders who remain untouched by Ebola, government restrictions on public gatherings are harming livelihoods. Markets across the country have been banned in order to prevent large numbers of people from congregating in a single location. Shops are closing; travel restrictions make it difficult for both products and customers to visit.

The bans, meant to help stem the risk of infection, also prohibit farmers from assembling in big numbers to undertake large-scale farming. Food production has significantly dropped off, and for those who survive the epidemic, hunger and malnutrition loom in the new year. Combined, the bans and stigma attached to Ebola mean that across Sierra Leone, survivors as well as healthy families have had their earnings hobbled.

World Vision has been working with faith communities across Sierra Leone to help correct prejudices and eliminate the stigma that threaten health workers and survivors across the country. Thirty pastors and imams have been brought together and trained on signs and symptoms of Ebola, as well as simple methods of prevention, like hand-washing, and how to safely bury Ebola’s victims. In a time of panic and suspicion, leaders of different faiths worked together last weekend to reach almost seven thousand people around Bo, a large city in the south of the country.

Salay & Marie

Salay and Marie are two of the lucky ones. Ebola has not yet reached them first-hand, but their school has been closed indefinitely all the same. As with the markets and farmers, the ban on gatherings is keeping children safe, but at a cost. Across Sierra Leone, schools were disbanded just before final exams in June, and children have been left without anything to do or learn for months. Parents fear that early marriages and pregnancies may result.

World Vision has been working with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Education since October, and is broadcasting school lessons on 28 radio stations across the country. Now, every morning at 10 am Salay and Marie can be found sat quietly outside their house, straining to listen to the day’s primary school lesson. After so many months of a strange kind of summer holidays, the girls are eager to learn. Both Salay and Marie are careful to take notes, in the hopes that they won’t be too far behind once the epidemic is eventually behind them.

Christian

Outside Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, Christian crouches in front of a medical centre. He has stayed healthy so far, but his family hasn’t. His father says that at least ten of his aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents have died of Ebola in the past few months.

Health clinics in Sierra Leone, which already struggle in normal circumstances, have not always been able to accommodate everyone who requires treatment. Now, the highly contagious nature of the Ebola virus has compacted the problem, as nurses and health staff become ill themselves. The less spaces there are in clinics and isolation centres - and the less staff there are to care for the people there - the more likely victims are to infect their own families as they attempt to care for them.

Christian’s luck may now be running out. His sister is already hospitalised in the clinic he’s waiting outside of, and he’s worried that he too has caught the disease. Now he is waiting for a space to open in the overburdened clinic so that he too can be treated.

World Vision is supplying personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies to health workers across Sierra Leone. Right now over one in four health workers treating Ebola patients catch the disease as well, severely weakening an already struggling health care system. With personal protective equipment, health workers can stay safe and healthy, and help others reach the same state of being.

Working for Hawa, Salay, Marie, Christian and thousands of others around the country

World Vision has been working in Sierra Leone since 1996, and as of this May, UK sponsors were directly helping over 3,000 children. As of yet, no UK sponsored child or their families have been directly affected by the outbreak, and World Vision is working to keep children safe and protected.