August 5 But now a new challenge strikes our community. As you may have read in the news, there has been an outbreak of ebola in western Uganda which is affecting our communities. It was first reported about two weeks ago but since then several people have died. Others have been taken to a quarantined areanear the Hospital. The disease is just in our area and at our health center we have had few suspected cases as mentioned above. We are trying to engage some protective measures for our staff but the problem is that we do not have real protective gear. They have only been supplied to the government Hospital – not to the outlying clinics like ours.
The impact of the Ebola outbreak on us as nurses and other health workers at our facility is that we are working under a lot of risk and fear for our lives because we do not have enough protective gear as we should. For example, one medical worker who had been very involved in the care and treatment of the first people who died of Ebola in recent weeks also died. The health center administration is trying its best to provide some gear but it is hard to get enough due to financial constraints as it was not something that was planned for. The task force team that was set up at the neighboring government hospital promised to give us some gear more than a week ago but we have received nothing up to now. Yet we continue to handle a lot of suspected cases including pregnant mothers.
We imagine that soon movement will be limited or prohibited to avoid infection. So the health center may have to look into a possibility of transporting the nurses instead to the villages to reach out to the mothers if we are to attend to them. I do not know if the health center will manage such extra expenses.
http://everymothercounts.org/blog/201208/report-front-lines-uganda
