Doctor returns to Africa: Why the fight against Ebola is not over


Ebola has faded from the headlines. It has taken a back seat to Zika, the latest terrible disease making news and causing worldwide anxiety, but Dr. Michael Drusano knows there’s more to a story than a headline.

Michael Drusano, M.D., is going back to Sierra Leone to care for Ebola orphans.

Michael Drusano, M.D., is going back to Sierra Leone to care for Ebola orphans.

“Just because people aren’t dying in the streets every day doesn’t mean the suffering has abated,” says Drusano, a specialist in family medicine and an assistant professor in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine.

And so Drusano, who in 2015 spent nearly six weeks in the Ebola hot zone of Sierra Leone treating up to 30 patients a day, is going back to Africa because he wants to and because he needs to. He wants to help Ebola orphans. He needs the closure.

“I think in many ways it’s not just to fulfill my interest in global health, but I also think to assuage a particular amount of guilt,” he says.

Drusano doesn’t know if anyone has studied returning humanitarian aid workers’ and survivor’s guilt, but he knows it will be an emotional experience going back.

“There were times working in the Ebola treatment unit when I had to abandon the patients because it was only me and a partner, and my partner started getting dizzy or claustrophobic, or time was about to run out inside the hot zone,” he says, “and we had to leave because you’re not allowed to be inside the unit by yourself for safety reasons.” He also recalls the many times he watched helplessly as children died in front of their parents, or parents died in front of their children. “So yeah, I think [going back] it’s also to alleviate some guilt– the what ifs that I still ask myself to this day.”

But there also is great purpose to his two-week trip. Drusano is the medical director of a home for Ebola orphans. The Dream Home, established by a U.S. 501c3 nonprofit in Freetown, houses 22 Ebola orphans. The inspiration for the home was a volunteer nurse who died from Ebola (along with her husband), leaving behind a daughter who contracted the virus but survived. The girl is now one of two Ebola survivors who call the orphanage home.

The British charity Street Child issued a report last year that estimated more than 12,000 children have been orphaned by the disease in Sierra Leone. Often abandoned by friends and family due to the stigma of Ebola, these children frequently have nowhere to go. Girls often turn to prostitution to survive. Places like Dream Home provide them with food, shelter, education, a new family — an environment where they can dream again.

When Drusano heard about the orphanage on Facebook, he immediately volunteered and has been working with it long-distance. Finally, this week, he is getting to visit the orphanage and meet the children. He’ll be performing physicals, training the staff on basic CPR, and helping with fundraising because, he says, money is always a challenge. “I recently arranged for Plumbers without Borders to deliver a solar power pump so they can have running water, and I have a crowdfunding page to raise money for their food and education.” Drusano will also travel to the nearby town of Kono to help establish a maternal health program at the only clinic in the area.

“When you go to these very poor countries, like Sierra Leone,” he says, “even if you’re not there for very long, you know that you can make a difference.”