Something Positive!

After yesterday's events, I needed to focus on something positive today. The current outbreak has been caused by the Zaire strain of Ebola, which happens to be the most lethal of the strains. We have had some patients survive, and several of the survivors have returned to help take care of patients, especially the younger ones. We will also occasionally use a survivor to go into the confirmed ward to help encourage the patients to keep drinking.
This morning, ABK and I were responsible for the breakfast meal pass. We had three small children in the suspect ward, one with his mother and two with survivor caregivers. The two caregivers had passed the majority of breakfast to the patients in suspect before we even finished donning-which was a tremendous help and enabled ABK and I to focus on the sicker patients in the probable and confirmed wards. I am so very thankful for the survivors!! The one caregiver is one of our survivors-I cannot imagine how traumatic it must be for her to go back into the confirmed ward to help our patients, but she is so willing to help!
The survivors work in shifts as well. They wear paper scrubs and paper scrub booties. They have to take a chlorine shower after each shift, because, while we believe they cannot contract Ebola* again, they could carry the virus to others on their skin. Hence the need for disposable scrubs and the chlorinated water shower after each shift.

*Addendum: we do not believe someone who has survived Ebola Zaire can contract it again but we do not definitively know this to be true. We also do not know if surviving one strain of
Ebola would help you survive the other types. The different strains do have genetic differences. There is still so much we do not know about EVD.