Spotlight on the News: Films from the YFF

We’ve seen CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault reporting from the streets of Monrovia, Liberia. We’ve seen the tired face of the doctor, the nurse who digs into her own pocket to buy water. We’ve cringed as we watch the ambulance driver working without protective gear. We’ve seen the patients in tents, the bodies in the streets.  These are the images of Ebola in West Africa and they are dreadful.

The outbreak started a year ago in Guinea with the death of a two-year old child. Since then Ebola has infected 17,800 people and claimed 6,331 lives. (Dec. 10, 2014) Many believe the numbers are much higher. Patients have carried the disease to Europe and the United States. Signs at Admissions Offices in Canadian hospitals ask whether patients have recently returned from West Africa. The disease is only a plane ride away.

Just recently, Time announced its Person of the Year, a group comprising the Ebola Fighters: doctors, nurses, caregivers, ambulance drivers and workers who remove the bodies for burial. In her article, Time managing editor, Nancy Gibb, states that “the rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and women are willing to stand and fight.” That willingness is the reason for the magazine’s choice for 2014.

It must be recognized that the Ebola Fighters face great risk. People infected with the virus suffer from diarrhea and bleeding and since the disease is spread through contact with bodily fluids, there is danger of transmission.

Extreme precautions must be taken and so there are the “space suits” that workers don to prevent the spread of the disease, a necessary precaution but one that has its disadvantages, too. In West Africa, the protective gear can be worn for only an hour at a time because of the heat.

In many neighbourhoods, the suits are a hindrance to communication. People simply don’t trust these “aliens” in their space suits. They refuse to answer questions about people in contact with the affected patient. They don’t believe when they’re told they have to cremate the body and forego their usual burial customs.  

Step into this devastation the front-line Ebola workers. Dr. Kent Bradly worked in Monrovia.  When he tested positive for the disease, he returned to Atlanta and received treatment with ZMapp, an experimental drug developed by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. He has made a full recovery.  

Foday Gallah is an ambulance driver who contracted Ebola trying to save the life of a four-year-old orphaned by the disease. He has made a full recovery, too. So has the child.  

Salome Karway, a nurse’s assistant, tells the story of a neighbour who would bring her ten-month-old baby to the fence of the Ebola Treatment Unit so she could sing to her. The story gives hope to those a now recovered Salome visits in her role as caregiver.  

The stories are many and of course, not all of them have had such positive outcomes. That is why people marvel at those who are willing to stand and fight against a disease that carries such risk, against a disease that threatens us all.  

Despite the recent news, Ebola goes back a long way. In 2000, the disease attacked Uganda. More than 425 people contracted the virus, mainly in the northern town of Gulu. More than half of them died.  

Saskatchewan filmmakers Lori Kuffner and David Belluz recognized the heroic struggle of the medical staff in their film “The Ebola War: The Nurses of Gulu”. An uplifting story of courage and determination, the DVD will screen at the Godfrey Dean January 8 at 2:00.