Ebola Patient Survives Deadly Virus-Makes Startling Revelations

Claudius Barnawolo, an Ebola survivor, has said in Monrovia that his “survival is a complete miracle from God.” “It is only God that has kept me alive. It was strenuous and pathetic, because I was living while people pronounced me dead,” Barnawolo, a Physician Assistant (PA) at the Redemption Hospital in New Kru Town, Bushrod Island, narrated.

The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare discloses that 104 persons up to date are tested and confirmed as Ebola patients while the total number of deaths from the Ebola virus in the country has risen to 66.

The Ministry said Ebola virus has no cure, the virus kills up to 95 percent of the people it infects, but it leaps from person to person only through contact with bodily fluids but medical teams have always effectively segregated infected areas and stopped the virus’s spread.

With the medical confirmation that the virus has no cure means the 104 persons infected with Ebola in the country are likely to be on dead roll, they might die in twenty-one days time which Information Minister Lewis brown said is the less surviving days for the virus carriers.

Health authorities struggling to control the worst outbreak of Ebola on record said drastic action is needed to prevent more deaths, with the outbreak, already the deadliest in history, had killed almost 400 people as of last week Thursday in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The reports added that to this day, the health ministries of the three countries lack effective ways to build public awareness.

According to an alarming report released last week by Doctors Without Borders, West Africa’s current Ebola outbreak is “out of control.” That should shock the governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia into action. It marks a frightening moment for a disease that has been contained numerous times before.

Addressing the Ministry of Information regular press briefing in Monrovia, Assistant Health Minister for Preventive Services, Tolbert Nyenswah said of the 66 deaths, Lofa County accounts for 35.

Lofa, which borders Guinea and Sierra Leone that are also fighting the Ebola menace, is where the first case of Ebola was reported in Liberia in May. Montserrado County, which hosts the Liberian capital Monrovia, accounts for 29, while two deaths are recorded in Margibi County, situated about 35 kilometers from the capital Monrovia.

He made the statement Wednesday at programs marking his re-integration into society after a month of intense treatment at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia. Claudius said he was grateful to the Almighty God for granting him the opportunity to be back outside the isolation center and to once again experience the natural breeze that he missed so much.

Barnawolo told journalists that he contracted the disease while catering to a nurse who had come down with the Ebola virus. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Case Management Committee at the John F. Kennedy Hospital, Dr. Moses Massaquoi, said the case of Barnawolo is an indication that “we can have survivors, if Liberians come to the hospital on time and stop denying the existence of the disease in the country.”

Dr. Massaquoi said he was pleased to present Barnawolo to his family who had lost all hope about the survival of their brother and son. Speaking for the family of the survivor, Nenne Parker said she was happy to see her nephew alive after coming down with the deadly disease.

Nenne, who is also a nurse at one of the hospitals in Monrovia, said nurses are not protected at their various places of work, putting them at “a very high risk of contracting the disease” just as in the case of her nephew Claudius.

According to her, doctors, nurses, physician assistants, among others, lack the protective gears needed to treat people suspected of being Ebola patients, and called on the Government to find a solution to this problem affecting the entire health sector of Liberia.