After surviving what many have termed ‘the world’s deadliest disease’ – 29 year old William Pooley, the British nurse who survived the deadly Ebola virus, says he’s planning to return to Sierra Leone to help fight the outbreak, a move his mother, who had hoped he would not go back, hesitantly concedes will make her “very proud”. More…
In an interview with The Guardian – Pooley, the first known Briton to contract the virus, called on David Cameron, who sent him get well wishes while he was in hospital, and Barack Obama, to do more to mobilise the international community to get the epidemic, raging through west Africa since March, under control.
He said: “It’s a global problem and it needs global level leadership so Obama and Cameron … need to show some more leadership on this issue,” says Pooley, while acknowledging his “huge gratitude” to the prime minister for his role in his repatriation and care. “Sierra Leone needs lots of international health-care workers working with big NGOs like MSF and Red Cross. All of that needs to be increased.
“So while I’m happy to be recovered and alive, there’s a lot of stuff on my mind with what’s going on back there. It would be relatively safe for me to go back and work there, and it’s really the least I could do having received all this amazing care and have people look after me and potentially save my life. It’s the least I could do to go back and return the favour to some other people, even just for a little while.
“The more help they get the less chance there is they get sick. If they get sick they are just going to end up in a ward in Kenema with less chance than I had.”
Speaking on his experience with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Pooley said:
“Those wards A and B when I first started were pretty grim. Corpses, blood, the place was really dirty – people just dying in quite unpleasant ways. When I first started there were not enough materials, there was no running water, no sheets or towels to clean a patient with. They might be incontinent, they are often confused, so you can imagine, with diarrhoea and vomiting, patients get in horrible condition.
“When I first started there was not a thing that you could use to help them. You’d just have to improvise, find a way of cleaning them and try and find something to cover them with.”
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