British Aid Worker's Touching Diary Reveals How Health Workers Are Worst Affected by Ebola

54 year old Cokie van der Velde, a sanitation expert volunteering with Medecins Sans Frontieres has revealed how six of the nurses she worked with have died from Ebola. Cokie has been helping out at a treatment centre in Liberian capital Monrovia and a hospital isolation ward three hours away.

The World Health Organisation said that 60 medics had so far died in West Africa, falling ill as they bravely battled to save other people.

American aid workers Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were infected in Liberia, and have been flown home for treatment. Sierra Leone top Ebola doctor died of the virus and a doctor in Nigeria was recently infected after treating an Ebola Victim in Lagos.

Cokie said: “It is heartbreaking to see such brave people perishing at the hands of this awful disease.” Despite the risks, Cokie plans to return to the region next month.

Below are excerpts from her diary.

Day 1

It’s 5.30am and I’m the first out of bed. It’s a half-hour drive to the Ebola ­treatment centre. I arrive at 7.30am and change into scrubs and rubber boots in the “low-risk zone”.

I need to put on full protective gear. I pull on a pair of examination gloves, and then a yellow suit. It goes up to my neck and down to my ankles. Already I’m starting to sweat.

It’s very humid and hot. Next is the mask, the hood, and then an enormous plastic apron. I fumble with surgical gloves, then thick rubber household gloves. Finally I put on my goggles.

Before I go in the high-risk zone, a staff member checks to make sure not one millimetre of skin is showing.

I start by emptying buckets of faeces and vomit. Some people have terrible diarrhoea or are bleeding, so there’s a lot of cleaning. I make sure they all have water – most are so weak, they can’t even unscrew the lid of a plastic bottle; some can barely speak.

Soiled sheets go in bins, which are taken to the burning pits – once a day we burn the waste. Every day there are dead bodies, every day the number is increasing. When somebody dies, we put their belongings in bags and burn them, with the mattress cover and sheet.

Day 2

I am training some new staff, locals who will work as hygienists and cleaners.

I listen to a radio phone-in. Someone calls in to say there’s no such thing as Ebola. This is the first time the disease has broken out in West Africa, there’s a lot of fear and misinformation. We go through all the rumours and dispel them.

Then I explain what Ebola is and how you can protect yourself.

Day 3

I’m heading out of Monrovia to visit the main hospital in Bong County. It’s a three-hour trip.

When the outbreak started local health workers weren’t taking proper precautions. It spread through the hospital staff. Seven nurses from this hospital have been admitted to the centre in Monrovia; six are dead.

I meet the head of the health team. He’s doing his best in very difficult circumstances, with terrified staff.

They have only one ambulance. The burial team has to use a wheelbarrow, or garbage collecting truck, to move corpses around.

Local religious leaders are preaching against health workers, saying it is them spreading the disease. They’ve set up a small isolation unit, but there’s nobody to staff it. It’s an impossible situation.

Day 4

I feel we’ve reached a tipping point. When I arrived in Liberia four weeks ago, there were four or five patients in the treatment centre. Now the centre is overflowing, we don’t know where to put people, the morgue is full, people are turning up with sick relatives.

Day 5

I wake with a sore throat – it’s almost certainly due to chlorine, but paranoia has set in and I take my temperature for the tenth time this morning.

At night, sleeping can be hard. You lie there thinking, I feel hot, am I getting a fever? If I catch Ebola, who will I get to tell my family?



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