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 Well behind them in the treatment unit's "red zone" two young boys,
Solomon and Joe, who is wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pajama pants,
stand at a neon orange fence waving. Solomon is on day 13 of his
treatment and Joe is on day 8.
The nurses - Bridget Mulrooney, 36, and Kelly Suter, 29 - said both
boys appeared to be getting better, along with other family members
being cared for at the Bong County Ebola Treatment Unit about 200 km
(120 miles) east of the capital, Monrovia.
"Solomon's little sister, she was really sick but she’s getting
better. Today she's sitting up, playing with a little squirt gun in
bed," said a beaming Mulrooney, who is originally from Florida.
"It's so exciting when they get better."
The treatment unit has been open about six weeks. It was built by
the charity Save the Children, staffed by International Medical
Corps, a humanitarian organization, with funding from the U.S.
Agency for International Development.
It has about 50 beds, including 30 for confirmed cases of Ebola and
20 for suspected cases. On Tuesday, there were 15 confirmed Ebola
patients and another five awaiting test results.
"There's hard days; there's also really good days. It's very
encouraging to see them get better, to see them happy. We show
nightly movies, 'The Lion King' and 'Frozen' and stuff like that,"
said Suter, who comes from Michigan. "They love it, especially the
kids."
If patients are able, they bring chairs outside the treatment unit
tents and watch the movies projected on a sheet slung over a piece
of rope, said Mulrooney and Suter, who were speaking to Reuters over
an outer perimeter fence.
During a brief visit to Liberia, U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Samantha Power traveled to Bong County on Tuesday, where the
United States has also set up a mobile laboratory. Accompanied by
U.S. public health experts, Power visited the treatment unit but did
not enter the facility.
Seeing some U.S. troops in Power's delegation, young Solomon stood
and saluted. In a yard in front of the boys, black boots worn by
healthcare workers were hanging on poles to be cleaned.
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Mulrooney said many of the patients have moved her.
"One of my favorites is getting better right now, he's a man from
Sierra Leone. ... He came in really, really sick," she said. "I was
in PPE (personal protective equipment), and he could not believe
that I put my hands on him. He said, 'You're touching me. ... You're
not afraid of me.'"
Some 5,000 people have been killed by Ebola, predominantly in Sierra
Leone, Liberia and Guinea. There have been a handful of cases in
Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Spain and the United States. The disease is
spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or
someone who has died of the disease.
With several U.S. states imposing mandatory quarantines for
healthcare workers returning from West Africa, Mulrooney said people
considering traveling to the region to help should not be deterred
by rules she characterized as "unfair, unjust."
"I love it, I absolutely love it," she said. "I extended, I'm here
until the end of the year."
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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