this matter people refuse them there is no space there is no up depth for the Wolfpack in the community and that's how it spreads further because now the guys we are prepared to sacrifice into duty service reliability 20 cases yesterday 40 cases today and you know that tomorrow is gonna be 70 these are real people with real stories and and realize a bola an infectious disease that spreads through contact with bodily fluids including saliva and sweat has an extremely high fatality rate and is currently wreaking havoc in West Africa the recent outbreak which is the largest of all time really took hold in March of 2014 in Guinea it quickly spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone with cases also found in Senegal the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria as we gather here today the people of Liberia are in crisis the Ebola virus is spreading at alarming speed this epidemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people in the coming months right as a u.s.
President Barack Obama announced that he would be sending American troops to help combat the epidemic vice news was headed to Monrovia the capital of Liberia to document the fight against the disease with around 3,000 confirmed cases of infection and nearly half of those cases having become fatal Liberia is now the center point of the epidemic so besides washing your hands this right here this is key and you'll see people walking around with uh with spray buckets with just like little little satchels or little little canisters on their belt we first headed to redemption hospital which has become ground zero for Ebola cases in the city many potential cases are sent there first and the hospital is overflowing and lacking the proper infrastructure to treat them how to manage how to be able to continue well you find that although it is beyond our capability beyond our own that standard this is the reason why everyone is confused as soon as we arrived we saw desperate people outside trying to get Tremont I'm sorry sir are you okay he went in a lot drink several times so he has he has the virus yes so why can't we get him inside right now I'm gonna follow we're okay is there space are there beds inside their Airways Everywhere's occupies okay gentlemen we were just talking to outside he's been waiting out there for two hours he's clearly very sick he clearly has the virus but there's just there's just no space and there's really no one there that's that's taken care of him everything is completely overwhelmed so we tried to bring him to the attention of the people here I'm sure they know already but um you know the man's gonna sit out there there's nothing anyone can do right now there's just a complete shortage of medical professionals of health care facilities of space to treat this disease she's out for the district taking ambulance service I just thought it efficient and bold with the ambulance as you can see in the official symbol and we are waiting for the nurses then I can pop off here and then as far as efficient for the ambulance and why are they waiting is there just is there's no room in the and a holding center right now they're trying to create space are you are you scared I mean day to day you're around really sick people yeah because I'm working for my country and working for my people to sit like at least a lot of people live to be safe we are there working on a daily basis the tip is sick people for the burroughs community so other people can get affected I can tell you sometimes it's so convenient whenever I'm saying my citizen died on a daily business diathermy we then heard a commotion around the side of the hospital a female patient scared and wanting to see her family had fled out a side exit hospital staff tried to get her to go back inside as a crowd formed there's a crowd of people right by the exit the hospital where patients are coming out clearly not the right way to contain this disease I was sick but died everyday some in the crowd told us that they were family members of sick patients upset about not being able to see and get updates on their loved ones back out front Paul was trying to get out of the problem with stopping the spread of Ebola is the lack of treatment facilities and trained health care staff at JFK Hospital the situation wasn't much better we then headed to a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders also known as medicine sans frontier or MSF that morning MSF had stopped admitting new patients because of a planned expansion and because one of their expat health care workers had tested positive for Ebola MSF had been on the frontlines fighting Ebola since the beginning of the outbreak and had been pleading with the international community for more attention for some time they too however are forced to turn away patients Paul who we had met earlier at redemption Hospital was now an MSF trying to get treatment across the street we met Victor Marcos who was trying to get his older brother admitted to a treatment center with no luck have you tried to go to the hospital they say no or that one who I have been a person today disinter and Ragini at is that normal you can't enter Honolulu for I'm gonna rock so Jeff cases go to MSF MSF says they can't take what can you do now once I can do nothing I don't have I'm gonna to go for a ring yet you know when you go so I don't know how to do round four cheese while we were talking to Victor a woman who lived nearby approached and told us that some sick people in her community had been turned away from the clinic they had just returned home and she feared they might spread the virus there is no Spears there is no death for the walk back in your community is ginger as well and that's how it spreads further because now that yeah yeah very sick they were pharmacy at the house where are they right now yeah and you call ambulances you call police no one does anything maybe what even went the Attic kids you have the big bull man people are dying is it okay for us to talk to them they'll be okay with us yeah what do you think what you think it's okay to go what's your what's your what's your vibe I don't think you're you're fake I don't know what to do after a short to be we decided not to follow up on the potentially infected neighbors for fear of our own safety and because we didn't want to give the impression that we could provide help so when it's a West Point right now which is the largest slum in Monrovia Ebola hasn't hit there harder than it's hit anywhere else but the government tried to quarantine it about a month ago and riots broke out a treatment center was looted and the army actually opened fire and killed a child so there's a lot of distrust of the government there Liberia is still recovering from two brutal civil wars fought from 1989 to 2003 additionally many Liberians also see their government as wilfully corrupt with even President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson admitting corruption was endemic both of these reasons contribute to the lack of trust in the government and help explain why relations between the community of West Point and authorities are so strained we're on our way to reach Katie miler who runs a tuition free school for vulnerable girls in West Point in recent weeks her organization more than me has shifted to dealing with stopping the spread of Ebola in West Point this includes creating awareness teams who go out and spread information on the virus I mean is it getting better here is it getting worse is the awareness helping well what's getting better is that as the disease or the virus is actually spreading and getting worse than the thing is that people have changed their minds it's been a lot of chaos here and that is because there hasn't been a lot of communication the awareness team really just started recently like within the last week so I mean you had weeks where people were not really getting information in every single day you have 20 cases yesterday 40 cases today and you know that tomorrow it's gonna be 70 so you know every day it's like more and more people and I know these sound like numbers but when it's like my neighbor for example this morning I went to his house and he was sick I was able to give him drugs but he he died this afternoon it's like these are real people with real stories and and alive we are doing utter piss funding that is we are trying to get all of the sick people Archie is spearheading the effort in West Point and has been leading teams around the community people have been taking of the voting centers from voting centers after screening they are taking to the render cell or treatment unique but not all of the dtu's are they did to us bill all of the bully centers are filled so what we are doing is to try to ensure that we engage them at warm we encourage the sick people at pain Archie's team focuses on contact tracing which locates sick people and tries to find out who came in contact with them and may also have been infected so they can be monitored as well so what can you do for her trying to ensure that watch easy as she can be getting some medicine to be taking mm-hmm she can be got this right can't you keep harsh cruel then as soon as we get a video space back there we can use the ambulance we took what our script Lee and who's taking care of her I mean her daughter is young she's here does she know how to how to take care of her does she know not to touch her and not to do a body to be okay I just got to do about it to be yeah so the next thing we're going to do now is to talk to one person how to take care of halt and how they are going to go or you know in taking care of home okay what are all those steps preventive stays a little tick to not have yourself in problem – okay we want to do that today so you're gonna educate the family here about how to take care of together we are going to have the nurses coming in to closely look at her it will also be out there trying to ensure that we found space quickly that Emily's going to go to the hospital Ebola has an incubation period of anywhere from 2 to 21 days after coming in contact with it meaning that it sometimes doesn't become apparent someone has it until three weeks later unfortunately in a poor neighborhood like West Point there's also lots of other diseases like cholera malaria that show similar symptoms to Ebola adding to the challenge of contact tracing because it's believed for instance if in bola is whispered it sounded all of all I said yeah I don't know there's different look that is one is very stink yeah so you're saying there's a lot of disease here anyway yeah diseases but not in burlap so you believe in both exists you just don't think it's in West Point I believe in Beulah is real but not in words but not in West Point okay but don't you think that if you don't take the precautions maybe Ebola will come here we're heading to meet Sam the Data Manager for more than me and another one of the staff leaders working in West Point he recently returned to Liberia from decades of living abroad in America there's everything happening around you know trying to give your time and help we were just with the awareness team sort of going door-to-door checking on sick people only got a call a prisoner a man who was arrested was in court started throwing up and they think he's sick and the whole courthouse cleared out so they're trying to figure out what to do with him right now but it's sort of you know this is what it is here it's chaos and people don't really know how to respond all the time and what to do how to how to cope with this the ambulance finally showed up no small feat considering there's also an ambulance shortage in my road one displays like this however sometimes further strain community relations and lead to stigma for Ebola victims despite the chaotic scenes in West Point and outside treatment centers in most of Monrovia life moved along as normal as a – it wasn't a zombie land people all still went about their daily lives with some added precautions put in place the city was undergoing a heavy-duty awareness campaign and most Liberian rappers had even recorded songs warning people to be careful right Ebola is at its most infectious on dead bodies of its victims which makes burials and funerals and extremely risky practice Monrovia is dead were no longer being very instead they were being cremated so as not to infect others we met up with a body retrieval team working with the International Federation of Red Cross their job was to collect bodies from all over the city and prep them for cremation their first stop was JFK Hospital a health care worker had passed away and the family had received special permission to bury the body this particular family is that a big concern for you with these guys going in there I mean do you worry about them getting sick do you worry about that contracting disease and I'm sure the place in the mind of my team unfortunately there was a mixup at JFK we've been dressed for almost an hour plus now and we're putting them to fight a party the porter who came to picked up it's like they are saying that they've already talking about it and the family members say the body's here and a doctor say he has you know place it somewhere and so that week when will comes me will be able to identify the body but will garner the butin was messed up nobody knows who to the body from gear things got a bit confusing inside JFK admit the confusion a sick man struggled up outside the hospital gates his family said he had tested positive for malaria and typhoid but precautions were still necessary Ebola has stressed Liberian health care system so much that even those with other diseases are being turned away each time pick up body eat that many to do to spray spray our body anything we talk to spray or to you be but even with that I mean there's gonna be it's it's a really scary disease a man get a disease but we drink we if we don't do we will do it yeah who do we nobody would do it so we are trained for this purpose so we don't want that scenario and said I would a lot of dead bodies in the streets of Monrovia and nobody's picking up so once we are trained and we have the capability we have to do it you know importer to southern nation so you can see like the the bleach on the back of your shirt right now right all your shirts now just cover covered in bleach yeah emmanuel joked about it but he's doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the city every precaution needs to be taken and even taking off the personal protection equipment suits needs to be handled meticulously otherwise the suit wearer can get infected this is what they do ten times a day they have nine stops today they suit up they get ready and they go and you know they can't make one little mistake because if they do it's gonna spread one of their team members is gonna get sick it's gonna be even harder to get people to do this job so what we've what we've been told is that the symptoms here lead them to believe it's probably not Ebola it might be rabies or something of that nature but because of the situation every precaution has to be taken so everybody that's being disposed of now is being treated as if it's an Ebola victim [Music] the body retrieval teams often face reluctance from family members especially when the symptoms are in line with other diseases no one wants to see a loved one carried off in a body bag [Music] outside an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of Monrovia family members of an Ebola victim told us how they think he called the disease when I do mostly cleanup and the last time we held our pollyali was autumn ostinato bear boy then watching after he came morning sorry I will grant you Tony to go to your house it with custard during the burial is the mosque and you think he caught it from one of the bodies that was there you know that ok he's now calling qalam qalam qalam but if you put delay I tried a few to these people all day to respond to Corvallis fast will be fine so his community told him to come here they kick them out they drew him over here to put him in this house to keep him away from to come here and you started calling on Sunday when he got really sick when did he pass away when did he pass a last night so you have to do this ten times a day you talk to people who've lost their relatives I mean does that affect your mind are you because they are fed normally no with the trade for this there we are prepared to sacrifice into to the service for the library so we headed into a redemption hospital right now which is sort of in the belly of the beast here with the outbreak it was supposed to be a holding center but it turned into a treatment center because patients had had nowhere to go we headed in to meet the medical director dr.
Mohammad Sango who had been overseeing all efforts against Ebola so did you build this all we built this one year when the outbreak started registering where they decided that you really have because you weren't a holding center until recently we found that useful in sometimes instead of we in our waiting these patients are yelling machine without taking them you need to be to the right right foot please and what's your stuff I mean were they trained to handle this stuff before the outbreak started no yeah for this particular yeah yeah the practical aspects we've got a theoretical you see the theoretical training and the practical it's one thing in the classroom one thing in the field yeah yeah yeah redemption hospital which is typically a free clinic was only supposed to be a holding center for Ebola patients before they headed out swear for treatment when patients started flooding in however it became a de facto treatment center trying to cope with the influx as best it could the health care workers that you have that are treating these patients psychologically what they've seen the past few months it's gotta be very very hard on them so we have hot series of health workers you can see all of those cases that which one is none of them time DUI it is not because the virus passing it is because of the windy and to the management of the disease the medical infrastructure area but what they put to calculate to the list are much of food lost by this patient able to calculate to the least amount of electrolytes and what kind of electrolyte that is lost and you don't have that capability here the capability this is they're not part we it's difficult so difficult to continue with need helpers we need those who have experienced such pandemic before to come to a heat how are you coping emotionally I have to I have to put this stress know if nursing I will be collecting of circumstances I always tell if you teach so much about the disease and become frightened what is supposed to do to protect you you cannot lick it you will not eat you will not even fear that when this fire consumes you the disease equally confusion so you have to be a lot you have to be alert at all times no sleeping on the disease no sleeping on your emotions what the possible following around on camera music get around but should we get cut away or there are certain areas as you can yeah I mean we have so we have PPE suits if you need us to photos on you want to put into the EPI into a treatment center would that be possible because when you voted is the government yeah when you go to a peasant or the city park you become infected and become infectious to you take those things off in taking those things of let me let me independent advice taking those tips of these those effective materials that's our new Jetta so my dear anything just implants we heated the doctor's advice and decided not to enter the treatment center instead we headed back to NSF who had recently started taking in patients again so we're at the MSF clinic right now they've about 160 beds here and that's not enough at all you know they're they're doing the best they can but people keep coming in and out last week there were a hundred survivors they were able to transfer out but the worry right now is that this thing is increasing exponentially and it's gonna keep growing and growing and growing how hard is it for you guys to turn people away at the gate that you know are sick and need help that's the worse things that we have to do on a daily basis also with this specific disease we are we have the risk of the spreading when they go home that's why we give the kid it's one of the worst thing and what is also very difficult that we don't know what is going to stop because as long as there is not enough bed capacity in the in the city we will have to continue to do it behind me right here is the MSF gate where people line up to get in so every morning you know they come out here around 8:00 8:30 and judging by the people who have died last night and the people that have been released because you know they've stopped showing symptoms that's how many people they can let in and the people at the gate have to do a sort of triage where they see the sickest people they let them in they follow down this road right here and you can see the seats down there where they await sort of the next step in their treatment that they're gonna get how does it feel being a Liberian person and watching your country go through this seeing your fellow citizens in here in these camps and and they're not being enough help for them right now well to say the least this is an emotional period for me and every like area and so every day to see our brothers and sisters at hospitals and it cannot be taking it simply because these facilities do not have the space it's really emotional it's heartbreaking it's been almost two months since I last stopped going to see my mother and my daughter was dreaming I just read that are these are desperate times desire dangerous times James come back today and then they'll make him we'll find out if they get perfect so if he told us about Dominic who had tested positive for Ebola and recovered when his three year old nephew James was diagnosed as well Dominic decided to come back to the clinic and help him recover there is strong scientific evidence that once someone survives Ebola they are immune to the strain with which they were infected and you made the choice to come back in and take care of him you weren't scared to help I think I got his gun later that night young James's test results came back negative he had been cured of Ebola and him and Dominic were able to leave the clinic James is that clinic's youngest ever Ebola survivor that's just day after day after day of more people coming and coming and coming yeah as well is that people are working incredibly hard but will never be enough to get this outbreak under control so yeah people are making that horrendous choice of turning people away around health care every day and then yeah does it feel sometimes like you're fighting a losing battle of sorts I think that that makes a great deal of people that they'll be doing as much as they can and working incredibly hard so as we've seen here at MSF and among the local Liberians that we've hung out with that are combating this thing everyone's really doing all they can you know no one really has the capabilities the infrastructure isn't in place and no one really expected to get this bad and for the epidemic to grow so quickly there's hope that with the influx of US troops helping with the building of additional treatment centers and the international community finally paying attention the spread of Ebola in Liberia can be slowed some however feel the international community has responded too late and it will now take a much bigger effort to get the outbreak under control [Music] [Music]