Ebola isolation ward

I met Dr. Eric on his last rotation as an intern at Mulago, when he was on Ward 4A ID male. I recently learned that he had volunteered to work at the Ebola isolation ward, and asked to go with him to the ward. There are currently no patients there, so it would be a great opportunity to take a tour of the ward and get a grasp of the layout, so that when patients do arrive inflicted with the deadly disease, I’ll already have gotten my bearings and can go work there fearlessly, or at least less fearfully. And so I kept calling and hassling Dr. Eric to take me there. However, Dr. Eric is either the busiest man alive, or the flakiest, or maybe both. I even went to Mulago on Saturday as he told me he would be free to take me there in the morning. But after waiting for 4 hours with him refusing to pick up the phone, I finally gave up and left.

But I was not to be defeated in my quest. No. After morning rounds today, I asked one of the other doctors working on ID where the isolation ward was located. He showed it to me, and even gave me directions for getting there. So I straightened my white coat, tidied my hair, and found my own way to the isolation ward. When I arrived, I found the gate leading to the ward locked. The ward itself looked empty, which was no surprise. It really was more of a camp than a ward. It was located on the foot of Mulago hill, on a stretch of grassland. About 10 tents had been erected on the grounds, though the tents were so well-pitched, they looked like actual buildings from afar.

I knocked on the gate. “Hello? Anybody home?” No answer. I knocked harder, called louder. “Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?” Finally, as I was about to give up and walk away, a man dressed in green scrubs poked his head out of the tent nearest to the gate. “Hi!” I greeted him with excitement. I introduced myself, told him I wanted to volunteer to work there, and asked if I could tour the ward. “That is no problem,” he answered. He unlocked the gate, and off we went around the ward. He showed me the triage area, the dressing room for getting into the PPE before visiting the patients, the disinfection room for bleaching off the virus after seeing the patients, the tents where the suspected cases were kept, the tents where the confirmed cases were kept, the duty room for the doctors and nurses, the showers and bathrooms for the patients, and the waste disposal area. It was quite a small area, but everything had a cold, sterile feel to it. With nobody else around, the place felt like a cemetery. I felt a quiet shiver creep down my spine.

At the end of my tour, the nurse on duty came back from her lunch break. We sat in the duty room and chatted a little. I told her that I wanted to work there, and she put down my name and phone number on the doctor's duty roster. “We’ll call you if any new cases show up,” she told me. “Yes, please do!” I asked her what her family’s response had been when they found out that she had volunteered to work here. It turns out that she was somewhat of an isolation ward nurse. Whenever there was an outbreak of any epidemic, this area would get turned into an isolation ward, and she would work here. She was an experienced veteran, having worked through numerous Ebola and Cholera outbreaks.

She warned me to be very very careful. “You must not get careless. One mistake and you could die.” She told me about one of the doctors who had died during the last Ebola outbreak. “He knew he was going to die. He told me, ‘I’m dying.’ We said, ‘You don’t know that.’ But he did. He developed all the same signs and symptoms as the patients he had taken care of – those who died. He knew he was going to die. And there was nothing any of us could do.” She paused for a long while, lost in faraway thoughts and memories, recalling events probably best left forgotten. I thought she was going to cry, but she caught herself right at the brink of tears. She snapped back to the present. “We’ll definitely teach you how to properly wear your PPE when you show up for your first patient visit. Don’t worry. We’re very well-trained. The MSF people came here to train us.” I wasn’t worried at all. I knew she would keep me safe. I could see it in her defiant demeanor – there was no way she was losing another colleague to this nasty virus.