The Real Reason This Ebola Outbreak Is So Big
Lauren F Friedman
BusinessInsider.com
Aug. 20, 2014
When Daniel Bausch, a doctor and associate professor in the department of tropical medicine at Tulane, got to Sierra Leone in July, things were already falling apart.
As he and another World Health Organization-sponsored doctor made the rounds in an Ebola ward in Kenema, a city about 30 miles from the Liberian border, they were the only staff in a facility housing more than 50 critically ill patients. The nurses, some infected and all grossly underpaid, had stopped showing up to work — out of fear, frustration, or because they had fallen sick themselves.
Several patients in what Bausch called the “end-stage delirium” of Ebola had fallen out of bed or tried to stand, only to collapse amidst their own vomit, blood, and diarrhea. The cleaning staff was nowhere to be found.
“You have people saying they don’t have food, they don’t have water, they need their IV replaced — and you’re trying to do all of that,” Bausch told Business Insider. “I need to wash my hands before I see the patients, and there might be no running water. There [is sometimes] no soap, no clean needles.”
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