(task) Grief etched in stone: Sierra Leone finally lays Ebola to rest – in pictures | Global development | The Guardian

Sierra Leone RS

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Ebola, Mental Health
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> https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2017/apr/18/grief-etched-in-stone-sierra-leone-finally-lays-ebola-to-rest-in-pictures <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2017/apr/18/grief-etched-in-stone-sierra-leone-finally-lays-ebola-to-rest-in-pictures>
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> Grief etched in stone: Sierra Leone finally lays Ebola to rest – in pictures
> Rebecca Ratcliffe <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rebecca-ratcliffe>• Tuesday 18 April 2017 02.00 EDT
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> Cemeteries played a key role in the the fight to contain the Ebola outbreak that began in Sierra Leone in 2014. The traditional burial practice of washing bodies by hand was banned in order to prevent the disease spreading, and families were unable to witness the interment of loved ones. Finally, though, they are able to visit the country’s Ebola cemeteries and seek closure
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> All photographs by Peter Caton for VSO
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> When Ebola began to spread across Sierra Leone in 2014, cemeteries like the one seen here in Waterloo, in the country’s western area, became central to the fight against the disease. Convoys of vehicles conveyed bodies to burial teams, while families were told to stay at home. The traditional practice of washing bodies by hand was banned, a measure that many grieving families were reluctant to embrace. Burials were instead conducted by workers in protective suits
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> Ebola graves in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second largest city. Three years after the initial outbreak of the disease, many families still do not know where their relatives are buried. Austin Kennan, regional director for the Horn of Africa for the NGO Concern, which in October 2014 took over the burial system in the capital, Freetown, says bereaved relatives are approaching the organisation to ask about the location of relatives’ graves. Between January and March this year, about 300 families got in touch
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> An Ebola cemetery in Freetown. Concern introduced a mapping system so that family members – who were not allowed to witness burials – would be able to visit at a later date. ‘There are hundreds of graves in the graveyard. If someone comes to the graveyard and asks where a relative is buried, who died in 2014, then our family liaison officer can look up the list and take them,’ says Kennan
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> Ebola graves in Patbana village, in the northern city of Makeni. Seeing a relative’s grave can help bring closure to families who were denied the opportunity to hold a traditional burial, says Kennan. Such obsequies were banned to help stop the spread of the disease: about 70% of infections were directly linked to customary burial practices. Some families hid deaths from officials because they feared bodies would not be treated with respect. Almost 4,000 people are thought to have died from Ebola. Regardless of the cause of death, everyone was given the same burial to avoid contamination
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> ‘What the families really want to know is where did their loved one go,’ says Kennan. ‘At the beginning there was lots of fear, and there were rumours that people were just being taken and dumped into mass graves and that there was no dignity. Being able to go to a grave and see a permanent gravestone there, that will give comfort’
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> For some families, especially those whose relatives died at the beginning of the crisis, it may never be possible to find out where relatives are buried. Amid the chaos of the crisis, burial teams struggled to cope with the number of bodies and many were left in unmarked or mass graves. In more rural areas, Ebola cemeteries aren’t always accessible. ‘If I wanted to know the grave of my relatives it’s very, very hard … Many of the [cemeteries] have become like a forest, there’s so much grass, so many trees growing there,’ says Isaac Bayoh, who worked as an Ebola quarantine and awareness worker
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> The Ebola isolation unit at Makeni regional hospital. Many of the Ebola treatment centres have been abandoned, mostly because they were not designed to be permanent structures. ‘There were some very big ideas on the part of the district health teams saying we want a university, we want a hospital, but of course to run those things there needs to be a need and there needs to be funding,’ saya Else Kirk, country director in Sierra Leone for the NGO Goal. ‘Having a few cement slabs and a toilet block is not exactly a solid foundation for building a university or a hospital’
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> Nor is it realistic to have facilities on standby for another outbreak, says Kirk. ‘What’s much more realistic is the system that we now have, which is that each hospital has an isolation section so that for any communicable disease [patients] will be isolated in those units. They’re used whether its Ebola or cholera, any disease where there’s a risk of spreading’
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> An Ebola holding centre in Kenema Highway in Bo district. Although Sierra Leone was declared Ebola free in March 2016, families are still recovering from the crisis. Some – especially those who lost the main breadwinner in their family – may not have the time or means to visit a cemetery. ‘Those who lost a relative close to them, they are psychologically damaged and it’s going to be a long time they’re going to be like that,’ says Bayoh
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> An Ebola treatment centre in Kerry Town. ‘We’re letting [families] come to us in their own time,’ says Kennan
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