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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/With-no-fear-this-Goan-doctor-treated-Ebola-patients-in-Sierra-Leone/articleshow/46993249.cms
With no fear, this Goan doctor treated Ebola
patients in Sierra LeoneBindiya Chari,
TNN | Apr
21, 2015, 02.00AM IST
PANAJI: While he was
accustomed to unusual assignments since he joined Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF)
India, an international medical humanitarian organization in June 2009, a five
week stay in Sierra Leone treating Ebola patients will have no parallel for
Goan
doctor, Alan de Lima Pereira. The 28-year-old doctor, who is an alumnus of Goa
medical college (GMC), says though his five-week-long stay in Magburaka serving
at MSF's unit for treatment of Ebola patients was most challenging, he didn't
regret his decision nor experience an iota of fear, as he served Ebola
patients.
"I didn't regret nor fear, but those were trying times," says
Pereira, with a smile on his face to a question if he had any thoughts that he
had made a wrong choice during his five week stay in the African
country.
The difficult part of the job apart from the risk of getting
infection, was working while wearing protective gear in a country with high
humidity levels.
What worried Pereira the most, was that despite being a doctor, he
could not comfort patients in a true sense.
The high risk of
contamination required doctors and health workers to wear protective equipment
that covered them from head-to-toe, whenever they went near a
patient.
"Isolated patients could not see us except our eyes. I could not
comfort them either by touching or patting them," he says.
Strict
protocol required that the doctors and health workers could not spend more than
45 minutes to an hour with a patient. Doctors visiting patients in the
isolation
ward, had to go in twos.
One checked the patient while the other kept
tabs on the colleague to see that there was no contamination or the doctor
didn't touch anything accidently.
Many health workers and doctors have
succumbed to Ebola infection picked up from patients whom they had
treated.
In Sierra Leone alone, 11 doctors have lost their lives to
Ebola. "That's a really sad scene for a country which just had 51 doctors
before
the Ebola outbreak," said Pereira.
"We shook hands with other members
when we landed in Sierre Leone and before taking a boat trip to Freetown, we
knew that we wouldn't be able to repeat that simple gesture during the next
five
weeks," he says, indicating it was a tough task.
Pereira did not feel
deterred by the risk involved when he was asked whether he would like to go to
Sierre Leone, while his family in Margao, parents and three sisters, accepted
his decision boldly after initial reluctance.
"My parents know me better
than I know myself," he says to a question about his parents' reaction, when he
decided to serve Ebola patients. Possibly, his decision to join MSF itself in
2009 after a masters in public health and a certificate in health finance and
management from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, had given his
parents a glimpse of their son's penchant for a different or difficult career
path.
"I was certain I didn't want to do private practice or join a
hospital," he says coolly, while on his break in
Goa.
