By Evelyn T. Kpadeh
MONROVIA
Foday Gallah has not only survived Ebola, but has also gone on to become one of Liberia's best-known faces in the fight against the deadly virus.
Hardly a day passes without Gallah, a 37-year-old ambulance driver and senior student at the Symath Medical Science School, receiving a phone call to help an Ebola patient.
"Ebola is terrible. I contracted it and I know what I'm talking about," he told The Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview. "This virus is so painful."
Gallah contracted Ebola in March while helping a child infected with the virus.
He had received a distress call from a next-door neighbor that a child who had lost seven family members to Ebola was vomiting profusely.
"When I received the call that day from the community, I quickly put on my personal protective equipment and went to take the child to the treatment center," Gallah recalled.
"While carrying him in my arms, the child vomited on me, but I didn't know whether it had touched my body because – at the moment – I wasn't concerned about myself, only to save that child's life," he said.
In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has killed 6,388 people, mostly in West Africa, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.
The deadly virus has claimed 3,177 lives in Liberia, 1,768 in Sierra Leone and 1,428 in Guinea.
But Sierra Leone is ahead in terms of new infections, with 7,798, while Liberia has had 7,719 cases and Guinea 2,283.
Nightmare
Gallah's troubles began just two days later when he developed a fever and cold that eventually landed him in an Ebola treatment unit in Monrovia, where he tested positive for the virus.
"This virus is not a joke," he told AA.
"The very day I was admitted to the unit, I remember how my head pained me so badly," he recalled. "For three days, I couldn't sleep, eat or drink."
Gallah is still haunted by the pain and agony of the other Ebola sufferers he saw at the treatment unit.
"In my tent, there were men, women and children who were all in agony," he recalled. "Some of them cried out from severe pain until they died next to me."
According to Gallah, some patients would walk "butt-necked without clothes because the pain was too much for them."
Fortunately, Gallah – and the child he helped – both survived the deadly virus.
But he still had to face the stigma and discrimination, which, in Liberia, come with Ebola.
"Nobody wanted to associate with me – physically, morally or psychologically," Gallah told AA.
"One of my friends… openly told me not to touch him because I work with Ebola," he recalled. "I did not blame him; he did it out of ignorance."
The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.
It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.
While many of his colleagues abandoned their duties once Ebola began claiming the lives of health workers, Gallah's survival – and his return to his family – marked the beginning of his crusade against Ebola.
"I have a passion to see people survive," he told AA. "I feel very happy when I look around and see that a majority of those I took to treatment units survived."
Hardly a day passes without Gallah receiving a call from communities in and around capital Monrovia to pick up sick people showing Ebola symptoms from their homes.
"In my bed at night, I keep receiving calls from different areas. Most of those I dispatch [an ambulance to] are [Ebola] positive," Gallah told AA.
He hopes to see his country declared Ebola-free and, eventually, to be able help fight the virus in other countries.
"I have had Ebola and survived, so I cannot contract it again," Gallah asserted. "So I can work with any Ebola case or travel to any country to help; I will be glad to serve."
"I want to believe God chose me to do this work," he said. "When working with Ebola, it's either one of two things: you either live or you die."
www.aa.com.tr/en
