Karin Huster: Fairness in Ebola Treatment
Posted on Apr 7, 2015
Nurse Karin Huster, a PIH clinical lead in Sierra Leone, writes on the need to ask tough questions in "All Lives Matter," published April 6, 2015, in Slate.
"I was there.
I was there when our clinician collapsed at the Port Loko Government Hospital in Sierra Leone a few weeks ago. And I was nearby when we were informed soon after that a Sierra Leonean colleague was suspected of having Ebola. As head of the medical team in Port Loko for Partners in Health, a global health nonprofit, I worked alongside these two clinicians.
When our American colleague fell ill, he was initially transferred to Kerry Town, a first-class Ebola treatment center run by the British Defense Ministry, and from there flown to the National Institutes of Health clinical center in Bethesda, Maryland. When our Sierra Leonean colleague, an employee of the Ministry of Health, fell ill, we helped secure his admission to the same British-run treatment facility—the best option available to Sierra Leonean health care workers.
In these differences in options for care, the stories of these two colleagues abruptly split, with one receiving arguably the best Ebola care in the world and the other receiving the best Ebola care available in one of the poorest countries in the world."
