Even amid the unceasing horrors of Sierra Leone’s Ebola epidemic, one particular case stands out.
A 5-year-old boy had been found in his home in a remote village, the lone survivor in a house riddled with the corpses of family members. He needed to be extracted; the bodies needed to be buried.
At the Freetown hotline coordinating the dispatch of ambulances, police and burial teams, the operator who took the call was shaken.
Enter IsraAid. The lone Israeli or Jewish disaster relief organization on the ground in the Ebola zone, IsraAid is providing psychosocial counseling and training to service providers dealing with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. They include health workers, social workers, teachers and police, as well as the locals staffing Freetown’s Ebola hotline.
“Dealing with the psychosocial trauma is critical to addressing the Ebola outbreak,” said Shachar Zahavi, IsraAid’s founding director. “A major deterrent to treatment is that people don’t trust one another. We’re trying to teach police, social workers, health workers and teachers how to deal with people who are afraid of them, and how to manage their own stress and anxiety.”
Last month, IsraAid’s work earned a letter of praise and thanks from Sierra Leone’s first lady, Sia Nyama Koroma. She also happens to be a psychiatric nurse, and when IsraAid held a two-day psychosocial counseling workshop last week in Freetown, Koroma cleared her schedule to attend the entire program, according to Zahavi.
A 13-year-old organization funded in part by American Jewish organizations, and supported by the Israeli government, IsraAid honed its techniques in other disasters, such as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines. But IsraAid staffers say Ebola is their most challenging crisis.
“It’s more difficult than other disasters, mostly because it’s an ongoing disaster and it’s scary,” said Yotam Polizer, IsraAid’s regional director for Asia and now in charge of the Africa response. Polizer, based in Japan, spent most of October in Sierra Leone and is heading back next week..
IsraAid has brought four Israelis to Sierra Leone: two psychosocial trauma specialists and two logistics experts. Next week another six will arrive, and Polizer is working on hiring a team of locals.
It’s hard to recruit Israelis to join the effort, organizational officials say. They must be fit enough to work in grueling conditions required by Ebola protocols and be able to clear their schedule for at least six weeks: one week for training, three to four weeks in the field and two to three weeks afterward to make sure they’re not infected.
And then there’s the fear factor.
“At least two to three times a day people start to freak out, worrying they have a fever, and they have to be calmed down,” Polizer said. “It’s very challenging.”
When he returns to Sierra Leone next week, Polizer said he’ll have to reacquaint himself with the demanding strictures of life in the Ebola zone, which include taking his temperature every few hours; washing his hands with chlorine 20 to 30 times a day; refraining from any physical contact, even handshakes, with other people; and eating only at three or four carefully vetted restaurants. Most difficult of all, he can’t touch his own eyes. Relief workers say eyes are the most easily infected part of the body.
IsraAid is the only official Israeli presence in the Ebola zone. But while Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon declined a U.S. request to send Israeli military staff to Africa, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is sending equipment for three mobile medical clinics in the affected region. IsraAid will receive the two shipments going to Sierra Leone and Liberia and help integrate the clinics into existing international aid efforts run by such groups as International Medical Corps, Doctors Without Borders, and the U.S. and British armies.
In the United States, the New York-based American Jewish World Service has been leading the Jewish effort to send financial help to the region, funding 10 groups in Liberia and one in Senegal that are working to contain the Ebola outbreak.
These groups’ efforts include using radio stations and rural media organizations to carry out public education campaigns; training and equipping volunteers to deliver hygiene materials and information pamphlets to local households; providing psychosocial support and counseling to Ebola survivors and their families; renovating a clinic to act as an Ebola quarantine and triage center; and in one case, providing primary medical services to locals where local health care systems have collapsed.
AJWS has disbursed about $142,000 to its recipient organizations and raised about $820,000 from donors. Most of that sum has come in over the last six weeks, since AJWS increased its fundraising goal to $1 million from $200,000.
Despite the challenges of working with Ebola, Polizer described moments of satisfaction. The head nurse of one hospital outside Freetown came to one of IsraAid’s stress management sessions burned out and fearful after losing more than 35 colleagues to Ebola. Instructors helped the nurse with a relaxation technique in which participants close their eyes and imagine themselves in a safe place.
The nurse fell asleep, and she was smiling when she awoke. It was the first time since the outbreak began, she told Polizer, that she had enjoyed a proper sleep.