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Ebola Survivor's Haunting Echoes in New Outbreak
23 May
Summary
- A survivor recalled seeing a burial team collect eight bodies.
- He contracted Ebola after attending a colleague's funeral.
- His wife and son also contracted the virus; his son died.
Patrick Faley, an Ebola survivor, shared poignant memories of a past outbreak that resonate with the current crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He recounted witnessing a burial team collect eight bodies for a mass burial, a stark reminder of the virus's devastating impact. Faley himself contracted Ebola after forgetting safety advice and attending a colleague's funeral.
His experience transformed him from a community health volunteer into a patient, facing overcrowded wards and witnessing deaths firsthand in Monrovia. Although he recovered, his wife and son also fell ill. Tragically, his four-year-old son, Momo, did not survive the infection.
The hard-won lessons from the 2016 West African epidemic, which claimed over 11,000 lives, are now informing the strategy for the current outbreak in eastern DR Congo. Measures such as prohibiting funerals for those suspected of having Ebola are being implemented to curb the spread, aiming to prevent a recurrence of the past tragedy.
