Pediatrician recounts experiences treating children with Ebola

0:00There is an Ebola isolation ward in eastern Congo in the city of Bhutembo. And as 15 beds for patients who are sick and waiting on test results, another 15 for people who have tested positive for Ebola. And tonight, it is completely full. There's two young children both under the age of one that are quite ill. Rupinara is a pediatrician from Elmore, Ohio. She is there working for doctors without borders. And Pairs Dury Buscarin spoke to her about this Ebola outbreak and its impact on children. Rupinara remembers every face of every child she's treated in Bhutembo. I think about them all. So I know the age place of birth and date of symptom onset, the name of their mom. One of the hardest things in an Ebola ward, she says, is helping the kids feel a little less scared. Because I'm a pediatrician. You know I'm like I'm a pediatrician at heart. You can't bring in a toy to distract them where a funny hat.

1:01You can't hold their hand when they get really sick. And she's limited to about an hour at a time. That's been the very difficult part for me, is I can't be next to the bedside of this critical child. Every day before she enters the ward, Nara suits up in a fully disinfected hazmat suit. Only her eyes are visible. You're five years old and these people walk in with what looks like a space suit. Of course they're just scream. She remembers one patient in the quarantine unit. About five years old, who loved Bollywood movies. Her dad would sit with her, playing songs from the film, Desi Boys on a smartphone. She was watching like a Bollywood movie that I knew. Nara's family is from southern India. She grew up on these movies. So after the visit, she took off her gear, went outside to her patient's window, and did her best Bollywood dance moves through the glass. This time, looking like herself. And then she was smiling, laughing and clapping, and I was like,

2:03this is hilarious. I'm like, I don't even know these moves, but I will make them up for you. There's still no approved cure for this new strain of Ebola virus. About half of the people who are diagnosed with it die within a week or so. And it's even deadlier for children. And so right now, it's a lot of supportive care. So that means giving IV fluids, giving oxygen, treating their glucose, treating hypothermia. In 2014, Nara was part of the response to Ebola in West Africa, an outbreak that killed 11,000 people. She was working in an emergency department in Brooklyn when COVID hit the United States. I've never seen anything like this. The speed of transmission that this is working at, along with other aspects of a fragile healthcare system. There's a tricky thing about taking care of young children in an Ebola ward. Because there's no approved vaccine, it's hard to find someone already immune to the virus who can watch over them.

3:06When a parent comes in with a child, and then if that child tests positive, it is a complex situation to figure out how we can have a caregiver with the patient. A couple of weeks ago, Nara says, a mother in their ward died shortly after giving birth, leaving her baby girl entirely alone. I didn't know what we were going to do with this baby, because there was no other family members that had been exposed, and there was a high likelihood for this child to have Ebola. This very young newborn. But when she entered the baby's room, there was a woman there holding her in her arms. And actually it was an Ebola survivor. And did not know the family. And agreed to take care of this baby. Nara says the baby lived for 10 days. Almost every newborn who has caught the virus in this outbreak has died. Nara fears many more will lose their lives. Jerry Busscan and Pair News, Washington.