Lullaby singers bringing hope to Ebola frontline
Survivors who volunteer to comfort victims of this terrifying virus could hold the key to stopping it, says Adrian Blomfield in Beni ‘I wasn’t able to take care of my own children, but I now have the chance to take care of other people’s’
For a patient diagnosed with perhaps the world’s most chilling disease, Congo’s Ebola treatment centres are a terrifying place to be. From the moment they test positive, victims are placed in sealed bio-secure units. As they teeter between life and death, almost the only physical contact they have with the outside world is with doctors clad head to toe in decontamination suits.
There is one exception, however: in almost every transparent plastic cell, a survivor of Ebola, now immune to the disease, offers solace, encouragement and – because there is no need for protective garb – a human touch.
Such survivors are known as “lullaby singers”. With Ebola being declared a global health emergency last week, nearly a year after it first broke out, they may hold the key to defeating the disease.
Mwamini Masiki volunteered to be a lullaby singer in January after winning a gruelling-month long battle with the virus that killed her young nephew.
She is looking after a baby boy delivered in a bio-secure unit at the Ebola treatment centre in Beni, a town in eastern Congo’s North Kivu province that has recorded 321 deaths since the outbreak began last summer.
The baby, just two days old, may or may not have Ebola. His mother contracted the virus when she was six months pregnant and although she recovered, the virus may have lingered in her amniotic fluid or placenta.
She remains too weak to care for her baby and Mrs Masiki is doing it for her, soothing and feeding another woman’s child with relentless dedication.
“Whether or not he has Ebola, I’m trying to do the best I can to give him a chance,” she said.
Ebola, whose symptoms include fever, diarrhoea and sometimes bleeding from bodily orifices, is spread by coming into physical contact with an infected person.
Survivors play a vital role next door in the Unicef-managed nursery, where children of Ebola patients are housed. They may have been infected, but until the 21-day incubation period has elapsed, no one can be certain.
Healthcare workers cannot touch the children, who must also have no contact with each other. Neither food nor toys can be shared. Without the
lullaby singers, the plight of the nursery’s children would be more wretched than it already is.
Esperance Masinda does not even blanch when Bosco, the five-month old boy in her arms, spits up most of the formula she has just fed him on to her chest.
For her, looking after Bosco is a sacred duty. When Mrs Masinda had the disease last year a stranger looked after her baby daughter. When she was discharged, she promised God she would do the same. “I wanted to help other people’s children, just as other people had cared for mine,” she said.
Aid workers fighting to contain the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are convinced that those who survived the disease can play a vital role in ending the worst outbreak in the country’s history.
The third and perhaps most important role that survivors play is to spread the message that Ebola is a real disease, not a conspiracy concocted by Westerners and the Congolese government. Such beliefs have been widespread. According to a survey conducted in North Kivu last September by the Lancet Infectious Diseases Journal, a quarter of those questioned did not believe that Ebola exists.
They accused doctors of killing healthy patients in Ebola treatment centres in order to sell their body parts to devil worshippers. Few bothered to take the precautions needed to stop the spread of the disease, handling both the sick and the dead with abandon. Treatment centres have been attacked. Seven medical and social workers involved in the fight against Ebola have been killed.
Such conspiracy theories may seem outlandish. Yet North Kivu, like neighbouring Ituri where Ebola has also broken out, has been ravaged by conflict for more than 20 years.
There has been every reason to be suspicious. Outsiders, including government soldiers, have carried out massacres. When the government used Ebola as a pretext for refusing to let many in opposition-supporting North Kivu vote in last year’s general election, the suspicions crystallised.
However, the deployment of Ebola survivors charged with going from village to village and tell their stories in the same tribal tongue as their inhabitants is at last having an impact, aid workers say.
People are beginning to take the disease more seriously, bringing those showing symptoms to treatment centres and allowing professional health workers to manage funerals.
“They are one of the most valuable assets we have,” said Franck Abeille, Unicef ’s senior Ebola project coordinator in Congo. Because of improved treatment methods, aid workers also have more survivors to call on. Of the 2,546 Ebola cases since the outbreak began, 721 have recovered – a huge amount of whom have indicated their willingness to join the fight against the disease.
Ebola has historically killed 90 per cent of the victims it has infected.
Many volunteers are still coming to terms with deep tragedy. Gentile Kahunia lost her six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter over the space of three days in March. Yet when she was discharged from the Ebola treatment centre in the town of Katwa, where 446 people have died, the highest in the country, she willingly agreed to work in its nursery.
“I am very proud to work here,” she said, as she cradled 25-day-old baby Benoit. “I wasn’t able to take care of my own children, but I now have the chance to take care of other people’s.”
Yvette Katungy, who lost her brother, grandfather and two young nephews a month later, nodded her head as Mrs Kahunia spoke.
“When I’m working here it takes my mind off all the deaths I have seen,” she said. “Keeping busy and doing something useful makes it easier to cope.”
‘Whether or not he has Ebola, I’m trying to do the best I can to give him a chance’
Due to stigma related to Ebola, the names of children have been changed.