Sain John of God Catholic Hospital Mabesseneh

Yesterday, Nurse 1 has been proven negative again after the second confirmatory test by the diagnostic centre in kenema. She has been released.
However, another security staff was mentioned to be positive but he has been discharged. The lab staff is with his family in a hidden village where they are treating him for witch craft. However message from his family this morning indicate that he is doing fine. They have consented to allow blood sample be collected.

We lost one third year student again this morning. She too was working at the emergency unit.

The other staff, Nurse 2 is doing well with no symptom.

Yesterday, the management team held a meeting and we reviewed the measures taken and evaluated the interventions.

So far, we have procured locally quite a good number of basic PPE’ like gloves and others. We got hypochlorite in Freetown and I got some tablets from Accra.
We still approve to close the emergency until we are stabilize. Rosetta shall assist to fumigate the emergency and staff admission room.

We have also approved to pass bye laws to enforce the implementation of the universal precautions because doctors and nurses particularly and all other staff dealing with patients directly who fails to apply the UP shall be punished.

We also agreed to counsel the staff and request from them to volunteer themselves for screening especially those who had contact with any of these staff of suspected patients. So the nurses and doctors have their normal meetings now and discussing on these bye laws.

This morning, the team from Port Loko shall visit the hospital and we shall hold discussions on the way forward and we shall propose them to help us do the contact tracing.

The general atmosphere of the staff is calm but now they are alleging that the staff at the emergency maltreated on client sometime ago and the relative curse them and wished that evil happenings will occur in the emergency. So all those staff who cared for that very client are all edge to be getting ill. On the other hand, we are now contemplating on another bacteria or virus that has infected the staff which is not EBV. But since our microbiology lab is not functioning, so we are limited.

Lastly, the nursing staff have written a document expressing their concerns and requested that we reduce the patients load at the wards so that we could fumigate all the wards.

For now, this the latest update from me.

I hope it will allay fears and give all of us hope. We hope that the short term measures put though painful will help us stabilize ourselves and get serious awareness of prevention and control.

Be patient with us and help us fight well.

Have a good day.

Br. Michael M. Koroma.
Manager

Se disparan los casos de ébola en África Occidental