RISKING infection from the deadly Ebola virus, Cumnock agronomist Alex Murray said a willingness to make a difference drove her to spend six weeks in west Africa.
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Ms Murray, 40, travelled to Guinea and Liberia late last year on a six-week mission with the International Red Cross to evaluate the organisation’s response to the epidemic.
“The most important part of my decision in going was, ‘can I do something positive for this work?’ and I felt I had the skills that could enable the Red Cross to make future plans,” she said.
Training to apply and remove her personal protective clothing alone took two days.
“It’s actually a very systematic process of putting it on and taking it off,” she said.
“There’s three layers of gloves, two layers of coverall and a mask. Each time you take one off, you’re sanitised with a basic chlorine solution.”
The former Kinross Wolaroi School student said she was conscious of the risk of infection, but she had faith in her training.
“My assignment wasn’t to go into an emergency centre and there were policies in place that allowed me to speak to people who were infected, but I wasn’t going to contract it,” she said.
She arrived in Guinea to find the country at a standstill.
“One of my first impressions was how market-orientated it was. Because the schools had shut down, there were so many children out and about and marketing little things to earn some money,” she said.
Ms Murray said she witnessed some inspirational recovery stories.
“One woman who lost her husband, her three children, her sister and her parents ended up coming to the Red Cross one day and started working as a volunteer,” she said.
But her work also had a confronting side, following recovery teams in Liberia as they removed the deceased from houses, sanitised the houses to protect remaining family members and buried the bodies.
“They are collecting all the dead persons to make sure transmission stops, but what is also broken is the local tradition of burials and it’s a sad time,” she said.
About 21,000 people have been infected with the disease and 8600 people have died.
Ms Murray said the situation had improved, but there was still more work to do.
“It’s going from rapid response to eradication,” she said.
“The Ebola response is doing amazingly well for the resources it has on the ground, but there needs to be a huge focus and awareness of how to stop further infection so it doesn’t become endemic.”
danielle.cetinski@fairfaxmedia.com.au
