BOB Handby’s role against Ebola in the west African nation of Sierra Leone was supposed to be in infection control at a treatment centre in Kenema.
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But that all changed soon after the Port Fairy resident arrived with the arrival of a big inflow of patients from the Kono district, about four hours’ drive away across poor roads.
Rather than put sick people through the ordeal of travelling across the rough terrain, the Red Cross worker was sent to the Kono district to determine how to handle the new source of the deadly disease that has so far killed nearly 9000 people.
What he found at the Kono hospital was chaos.
At least eight nurses at the hospital had died from Ebola and the rest had fled, leaving only a few grossly overworked doctors to handle the health catastrophe.
Ebola patients at Kono hospital were being treated in the same areas as those with other health problems and the hospital was filthy.
The nightmare situation Mr Handby confronted in Kono was one of countless he has handled during his 30 years of service as a water and sanitation specialist with the international Red Cross.
While he retired from his full-time position with Red Cross in 2012, he remained on a voluntary call-up roster.
Stepping into the breach once again, he agreed to go to Sierra Leone last month when Red Cross had trouble getting staff over Christmas.
At the Kono hospital, Mr Handby led a small team that set up a separate Ebola treatment area at the front gates and disinfected the general hospital.
The segregation procedures he set up to safely treat the deadly disease were complex, but he did not deal directly with Ebola patients.
About half of all Ebola patients at the treatment centre died, but he expected the mortality rate was much higher for those who never made it there.
While finding a cure to Ebola was important, Mr Handby said equally as vital was educating people in the remote parts of Africa about how to prevent the transmission of the disease.
That was brutally apparent at Kono hospital, where 28 cases came from one illegal burial of an Ebola victim in the community.
Mr Handby said the big international response to the epidemic in west Africa had slowed the disease’s death toll and he was confident it could be managed.
He also believes the world won’t again experience an Ebola epidemic of the same scale, thanks to lessons learnt from the 2014 outbreak.
