By Dr Sue Catling.
So, nobody told me that
(For those of you who don’t know Lassa Fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms include fever, facial swelling and bloody vomiting among many others. On average 15-20% of hospitalized patients die. It’s a pretty horrible one.)
Originally set up by charitable donation with all mod cons and barrier nursing, the unit has now deteriorated to a building with no facilities, with “keep out” signs .
Apparently there are no barrier nursing packs, no bed linen ...patients simply are put in there to be isolated, and to die.
This is a disease that is spread by aerosol droplet infection, i.e. you can catch it like a cold, and yes, the unit had several patients - one of which was admitted and died of haemorrhage while we were there.
And then something interesting happened. We found Miller’s bar. Miller is a trained anaesthetic nurse who, as a sideline, runs an on-site bar he inherited from his dad. The bar is a shack made of corrugated iron sheets and gaily decorated with striped wooden poles.
It looks absolutely amazing – a triumph of the human spirit over adversity!!! It sells cold beer (via a cooler powered by the hospital generator) and you can sit with the scraggy chickens at a rickety table outside and watch the local boys play footie with empty plastic bottles.
And .....it is 50 yards from the Lassa fever Unit.
Within a week at Phebe, we sit laughing in the mud on the steps of Miller’s bar, swigging cold beer over the bottle, joking about the proximity of the lassa fever unit and thinking “hey, this is a really nice spot to sit, and this beer is really cold” .
And we listen to the story of how the latest patient was admitted by one of our very own students, and we buy her a Coke (she doesn’t drink beer!). With grateful thanks to Miller and Family.