In recent days, at the Holy Spirit Hospital of Mekeni, the campaign for blood surveillance for Ebola survivors ahs been launched, as well as the investigation of the potential spread of the virus amongst contacts (those who have been near to infected people, have touched their bodies during purification and farewell ceremonies, have washed their underwear, have taken care of them, and so forth. This is a project that has been made possible by the new laboratory that was installed at the hospital whose creation, entrusted to EuroBioPark, was facilitated by the Camillian Task Force with funding by the Italian Bishops’ Conference. This project, in addition to taking advantage of the equipment available to the diocesan hospital, draws upon its potentiality and provides a notable service to the civic and scientific communities. Indeed, whereas the blood survey is intended to bring out the consequences of the virus for other organs (for example the awakening of dormant pathologies) and allows a monitoring of the follow-up to the epidemic and treatment of the survivors early on, the research into the anti-bodies in individuals without symptoms allows a testing of the spread of the virus, its virulence and the level of human resistance, thereby revealing a mutation of the virus, which could be more widespread but less lethal.

To this end, the survivors will be subjected to clinical tests to detect an activation of hepatitis B or C, with in addition a control of its gravity through an enzyme test. Other latent forms, such as the HIV virus, will be tested to allow an early taking in hand of the case. In contacts without symptoms, in contrary fashion, a search will be made for anti-Ebola anti-bodies in order to test exposure to contact and an overcoming of the disease without symptoms.

The carrying out of this initiative, whose characteristics are clinical and involve research, has not been easy. Indeed, whereas elsewhere, when epidemics take place, the practice is to examine blood samples, in Sierra Leone, for a series of reasons, this initiative has encountered various institutional obstacles, and not even the World Health Organisation was able to invert what took place. This situation, after a certain fashion, is now being changed, albeit in a reduced form given that it is not an authentic blanket epidemiological campaign but only research carried out with individuals who have survived the disease and some of their closest contacts.

In addition to the Holy Spirit Hospital, the same investigation/research will be carried out at the Loreto Health Services Clinic of the Sisters of Cluny. Indeed, this centre takes care of over a hundred survivors of the Ebola virus from those villages where the Sisters of Cluny engage in activity of a medical character. This is a vast reservoir of users who constitute a great resource for this clinical inquiry and research.

The role of the Camillian Task Force in this process has been that of coordinating the various partners and facilitating team work with the aim of: (a) promoting initiatives of a health-care character and research; (b) supporting four hundred family units in twenty parishes where psychological disturbance is of a relevant level; (c) fostering the formation of twenty-eight facilitators of psycho-social processes in the community; and (d) strengthening basic health-care structures which are called primary health units (PHUs). The various actors in the field have specific areas of action although each programme belongs to a single project whose aim is to transform this latest calamity into an opportunity to grow.

Br. Luca Perletti