Devotion guides volunteers to help during Ebola crisis

Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

Working with Ebola patients in Liberia, American pediatrician Alan Jamison treated as many people as he could as the country slipped into chaos. Each day, more patients showed up at the hospital’s doors. The deadly virus wasn’t the only danger: Ebola was causing such fear that some Liberians were threatening to burn down the isolation unit with doctors and patients inside.

His medical-missionary group pulled him out early as a precaution. Still, the 69-year-old retiree says he’d return.

“This is where the need is,” Dr. Jamison explains. “This is my calling.”

Dr. Jamison isn’t alone — even after three American aid workers fell sick, many other doctors, nurses and other health-care volunteers are on their way to West Africa, helping to staff hospitals and clinics and screen travelers to slow the epidemic’s spread.

Why are so many willing to put themselves in harm’s way?

“It’s a call, a zeal, a devotion. It’s an acceptance of a professional life outside the ordinary, with an element of adventure,” said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Hospital volunteer Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly already were in Liberia when the outbreak began, and decided to stay at the charity-run ELWA hospital in Monrovia to help. Richard Sacra, a 15-year ELWA veteran, immediately volunteered to leave his family in suburban Boston and return to the hospital when Writebol and Dr. Brantly got sick. Jamison also worked there.

All are committed to their cause. Like Dr. Jamison, Nancy Writebol and her husband, David, told The Associated Press that they’d consider going back. Dr. Brantly said he couldn’t return just yet, but would keep campaigning to end Ebola. Sacra also had no regrets, his wife said as the doctor was evacuated to the isolation unit in a Nebraska hospital.

“Once you go and you see the Lord at work, I mean, there’s nothing else that you want to do,” Nancy Writebol said.

These volunteers are passionate, but there’s also a cold logic to their commitment: This epidemic that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened 3,900 in five West African nations won’t end unless more experienced health-care workers confront it directly.

Ebola is being spread by people, in hospitals, homes and funerals. People catch the virus when they have direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of those who are sick and dying, or already dead.

At ELWA, Dr. Jamison trained workers how to protect themselves and the wider population.

The hospital in Monrovia is operated by Charlotte-based SIM USA and includes more than 200 beds as well as the 50-bed isolation unit for Ebola patients.

Keeping those populations separate is essential, Dr. Jamison said, but is no simple matter.