My Ebola Experience

As the day of the African Child was celebrated on the 16th June 2016 with the theme Protecting Children’s Right during violence and crisis in Sierra Leone, I want to express my gratitude to the Almighty God for His Protection over my

life and family. Sometime last year I was actively engaged in taking Ebola affected children from treatment center to a safe home. It was the scariest job I have ever done in my life more especially when little was being know about the Ebola Virus Disease. One faithful day a child survivor after being discharged from the Ebola treatment center had acute malnutrition, I was called upon by the safe home mothers were this three years old boy child survivor was temporarily staying due to the fact that none of his family members could be traced. I had to respond immediately from the office, I took along with me a driver and a fellow colleague from another child protection agency. I took the boy away from the hands of home mother and placed him on my lap and on our way to the hospital the boy urinated on my dress. I did not mind because the passion I have for children is much greater than a three years old vulnerable child urinating on my official dress.

We arrived at the hospital and we met a nurse who was at the triage and was supposed to ask few questions, the moment I informed him that the child was a survivor he immediately took a flight. Standing from a distance the nurse then told me I have contacted the Ebola Virus Disease. The boy started crying loudly, my colleagues became panicked and started blaming me for making them to contact the disease. The driver was restless, I was sweating profusely. I tried to convince the nurse prior to the little knowledge I had that since the boy is a survivor he is Ebola free. Other nurses came around and stood at a distance watching the scene, I hold the boy more closely thinking about my family then I realized that the boy was much more vulnerable because he had lost both parents and siblings to the dreadful disease. We stood there for more than 30minutes until a doctor from WHO came and remedy the situation and the boy was then treated, even at that not all nurses could feed him.

It saddens my heart to know that thousands of children died during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Amongst this children that died there were future lawyers, president, teachers, social workers bankers, entrepreneurs, innovators etc. Protecting children is a social responsibility, that child does not have to be your biological child, or from the same religion or tribe or nation. God will hold us accountable if we do not protect our children more especially during crisis simply because they are vulnerable