Working with Ebola

Lindy Laird talks to Donna Collins, the Whangarei nurse who spent a month on the front line of the war against Ebola in Sierra Leone

In a West African nation torn by a killer disease, Donna Collins found the very best in people.

Ms Collins was one of a large team of international nurses and humanitarian aid specialists sent by New Zealand Red Cross to work for the International Federation of Red Cross at a purpose-built Ebola treatment centre near Kenema, Sierra Leone's third biggest city.

She arrived back in Whangarei this week after spending three weeks in isolation to ensure she was not at risk of catching or spreading Ebola.

Ms Collins, a midwife and women's health nurse at Whangarei Hospital, and Wellington nurse Sharon Mackie were the only Kiwis in the team responsible for setting up and operating The Red Cross Ebola Treatment Centre on land the size of two football fields, shaved out of jungle.

About 18km out of Kenema, it was built in a matter of weeks as a "slow response" unit where every process is measured and planned, rather than "fighting fire with fire", where workers are bundled up in protective clothes and breathing gear.

With no vaccination yet available, care is based on treating other illnesses the patient has, nutrition, hygiene and combating the extremely high fever that comes with the virus. The Kenema treatment centre was considered a 5-star facility "because we had piped chlorine".

When the Kiwi nurses arrived the death rate was about 70 per cent, now down to about 55 per cent.

The nurses had signed up for three weeks but asked for an extension because "we still had a job to do".

"While we were there we were so heads-down-and-bum-up we missed a lot of the news that the rest of the world was getting. We weren't influenced by fear or misinformation or politics," Ms Collins said.

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Working with Ebola