“I Got Ebola from My Dying Mum and Survived”- Alhassan Kemokai

My mum died on the 19^th of July so I was observing myself…19^th…20^th… I moved to another room after the infection. On the 28^th, I started feeling a fever. I told my wife and children not to come near me please. When I discovered I was infected with the disease, I had to abandon my room and moved into another room where I was sleeping.

It is a single bed with a foam mattress. These bedding and clothing have now been discarded by my wife. They are now preparing for burning. She has burned most of the things that were in my room.

I have been admitted for the past 11 to 12 days in the Ebola ward. And I’m very excited that I’m out today. I see myself as a free man.

When I was walking (to the hospital) everyone was looking at me. I was very sad as I was going. I was shivering. Every 10, 15, or 20 minutes, I had to go to the toilet. I used the pathway to get to the hospital, the bush route. I trekked three miles to Kenema Hospital.

I felt like I was in another world (at the isolation ward of the hospital), that the nurses were indeed angels that the two books, the Bible and the Qu’ran, describe when you die, people will come and judge you. That the angels will come and judge you.

When we saw nurses we could hardly identify them. Each time I saw them I thought they were angels coming to question me.

I walked among corpses. It is terrible. I’ve seen today one, two, three corpses come out, I am very excited. I am very happy. I am out in the world today.

Now I play with my son. Now that I’m out of the hospital I play with my entire family. I play with Miza. We are now playing together. We do things together. We eat together. We do everything together.

Story of an Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) survivor in Sierra Leone.

Spread the message of hope coming from the body’s ability to fight not FEAR.

Kemokai was able to defeat Ebola because he had a solid immune system. Are you thinking of how to boost yours today?

Culled from: The Guardian, Tuesday, August 26, 2014.

Picture Credit: google.com

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EBOLA, FACTS minus FICTION

The first case of Ebola virus appeared in 1976, the disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in Democratic Republic of Congo where it was first recognized.
Reported countries ever with Ebola
Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Republic of Congo and now Nigeria.
Method of Contraction
● Close contact with the body of infected person.
● Contact with secretion of infected person.
● Contact with organs or other bodily fluids of infected person (stool, urine, saliva, semen, tears, sweat)
Signs and Symptoms
Fever, Intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat which is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, internal and external bleeding.
Incubation period is 2-21days and patient can only become contagious once he/she begins to show symptoms.
Cure
There is no known cure for Ebola virus and it would be right if we discard and ignore rumors going about that kola-nut and salt water can cure Ebola. This is because there has not been any clinical trial to validate these claims. However, trial drugs for its treatment are now available in the West African countries where outbreaks have been reported; and worthy of note is the NANO SILVER drug that has been donated by a Nigerian scientist in the diaspora.
Prevention
● Regular hand washing with soap and water
● Avoid eating bush meat
● Avoid crowded areas
● Avoid illicit sex
General facts about viruses
● They’re the smallest of all micro-organisms
● They live in the cell of their host and might not hurt them (like the Ebola virus in fruit bats)
● They’re the easiest of all micro-organisms to kill when outside its host
● Vaccines are the only drugs workable against viruses
● There isn’t any cure for viruses (HIV, EBOLA) yet.
Kindly report any case of anyone showing any of the mentioned symptoms to the nearest medical center for proper care or you call these toll free numbers for help (08037879701, 08037154575)
Let’s work together to keep our community Free from Ebola!!!!!!!!!



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Acknowledgement:
This piece was developed (with slight adjustments by me) by my two youngest brothers, Chinedu Akpa (an OAU Pharmacist in training) and Chigozie Akpa (an intending OAU trained Lawyer and blogger at www.akpachigozie.blogspot.com)

UKAZI is UKAZI!

I marvelled at this girl's brilliance and sense of cultural identity that day i met her. She's just like any other teenage girl in Nigeria but she exudes a lot of unusual and contagious confidence that caught my attention.
Her name is Ngozi and she's between 11 and 14 years old. She lives with her aunty and helps out at her shop; that was where i met her.
My conversation that day with her started by my explaining what Ebola virus was before i picked up a leafy vegetable common to those from the eastern part of the country called "UKAZI". I teased her by asking for the English name of the vegetable (thinking she would be a bit let down by not knowing it owing to her low level of grammatical sophistication). To my chagrin however, and with some air of incredulity, she simply told me "ukazi is ukazi, i don't want to know what the English name is".
After her submission, i simply kept quiet and thought about the stand this girl had just taken and i wondered, in how many areas of our personal and national lives have we not looked for English substitutes to what we have.
We seek these substitutes because in our estimation, they sound better, but worse and perharps more fearful is the unspoken reason of the inferiority complex we feel when we compare the names we give to things or people to foreign or English ones.
We think it wouldn't be exactly right if we allowed "eba", "fufu", "akara", "amala" and so on to be just what they are.
South Africans never sought an English equivalent to the Vuvuzela (even when these English people were contesting if it was proper to use it in the stadium) but it has made its way to the English dictionary.
I wish as a people we could adopt this stance as it concerns our cultural identity. I wish we could appreciate what we have and even promote them.
The greatest countries in the world today don't just have bulging GDPs, they also appreciate and aggressively spread their culture.
In the end however, Ukazi remains Ukazi.

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