Oct
26, 2014
A Visit to Freetown's Ebola Treatment Centers
Our first stop was at the Emergency Ebola Treatment Center, run by staff from the Italian-led Emergency Hospital. The Emergency Ebola Treatment Center is a 22-bed tented facility erected within the grounds of the
Lakka Tuberculosis
Hospital on the Peninsula Rd west of
Freetown. We found basic tarpaulin structures crammed into one end of
the compound. Nevertheless the facility appeared to us to be well run,
with good infection control protocols in place and courteous,
experienced and well-motivated staff (see Inside an Ebola treatment center).A scenic drive over the peninsula mountains along the new Regent-Grafton Highway took us to the other side of town and eventually to Kerry Town, some four miles from Waterloo along the Peninsula Rd to the East of Freetown. For an ebola treatment center, the site is suitably remote from population centers and other human activity. We found a tented facility, but spacious and professionally laid out.
Retracing our steps back along the
Freetown-Waterloo Highway, we arrived at the Hastings Ebola Treatment
Center. This is currently the only Ebola treatment center in the
country being run by the government, and government officials have been
keen to point out its successes (see Hastings Ebola Treatment Center
Discharges 49 Survivors). It is housed in single-storey concrete
structures, part of pre-existing buildings on the spacious grounds of
the Police Training School. We entered the facility without
encountering any infection control protocols and observed staff
lounging about the compound apparently without assigned duties. We were
unable to speak to anyone in authority, as permission from the Minister
of Health was required.A short drive from the Hastings center found us at the Chinese hospital at Jui. This is a large, impressive, multi-storey building recently constructed and opened by the Chinese government. Initially a general hospital, the Ebola outbreak has forced the transformation of the facility to an Ebola center.
