Christopher Mason
22 February 2008
column
Kampala — IT was by luck that the Bundibugyo Hospital became the isolation centre for suspected Ebola patients during the recent outbreak.
Local officials, responding to news that Ebola had been found across the Rwenzori Mountains, planned to set up an isolation ward west of Fort Portal, in Kacwamba where a health centre was ideally placed for the crisis.
But that isolation ward's life was short lived. Within hours of the first five suspected Ebola patients arriving, the local community stormed the health centre, vandalizing the isolation ward and threatening to kill any Ebola patients brought there.
STRUGGLING: Mr Kihumuro, with his sisters Monica, 8, and Joan, 3, at their home. Photo by C. Mason
"That was the worst because we didn't know where [the patients] had gone because they ran away," Ms Catherine Kemigabo, a health educator in Fort Portal said. "We feared it would spread but the patients were found quickly."
In the end, none of the 48 suspected Ebola patients in Fort Portal tested positive for the virus. But during the height of the outbreak, the stigma of Ebola lived on in Bundibugyo just as it did in the communities that did not get positive Ebola cases.
Consequently, families of suspected Ebola patients were shunned and health care workers were refused service in supermarkets and restaurants.
As part of its ongoing series examining the Ebola outbreak that killed 37 and infected 149, the Daily Monitor today looks at the Ebola stigma.
Amidst the signs of life returning to normal, businesses re-opening, markets lively and pedestrians willing to walk past hospitals without fear, are those affected by the virus and are trying to get over stigma from neighbours and friends.
"My friends didn't want to talk to me. They would just run away," Mr Michael Kihumuro, 16, said through a translator.
His sister and father died of Ebola.
"What really surprised and annoyed me was that people from the trading centre failed to come for my father's burial," Mr Kihumoro said, standing in the front yard of his home north of Fort Portal.
His eight-year old sister Monica stood nearby carrying their three-year- old sister Joan.
During the outbreak, those living along Kamwenge Road threatened to stone anyone who tried to leave Mr Kihumoro's house for fear they would spread the disease.
Some traders rejected money while others had relatives who refused to see them at Christmas.
Ms Margaret Kajumba, head of Fort Portal's Ebola surveillance team, became known as the "Ebola Woman."
"We felt segregated, as though we were carrying it," she said.
In Kikyo Trading Centre, where the outbreak began, community members felt the stigma any time they left the village to go to Fort Portal or Bundibugyo town.
"When we went to town, people would not sell things to anyone from Kikyo," said Julius Monday, who runs Kikyo Health Centre IV where 91 of the 149 reported Ebola cases were isolated. "I felt it as well. Any time I would go into the market, people would stay 10 metres away. They said I was carrying Ebola."
It poses a difficult challenge for the survivors and families of victims who are now struggling to put their lives back together. Many say they have still not been fully accepted back into their communities.
"People still do not visit me," said Kezia Kabugho, an Ebola survivor from Kikyo Trading Centre who lost her husband during the outbreak.
She is now left alone to care for 18 children.
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