An emergency-response team director for the aid group International Medical Corps, Sean... Read More
Casey uses one word to sum up his job for customs officials: humanitarian. The busy pattern of stamps in his frayed passport depicts his workplace: a world in crisis.
An emergency-response team director for the aid group International Medical Corps, Casey now travels dirt roads between Liberia’s capital Monrovia and the dense jungle of Bong County four hours away to help coordinate the construction of an Ebola treatment center.
As President Barack Obama yesterday said
the U.S. will send 3,000 troops to fight the Ebola outbreak, humanitarians say they’re juggling a record onslaught of crises from Africa to Syria that have stretched their resources and their ability to help those on the ground. Patients with symptoms are turned away daily in Monrovia because health centers are overwhelmed, according to the World Health Organization.
Front Lines
Doctors Without Borders said the number and severity of humanitarian crises has pushed its response to a historic level, with 23,000 local and international staff on the ground globally. As their numbers rise, so do the dangers they face. David Haines, a British member of the Paris-based disaster relief group ACTED who helped displaced Syrian refugees near the border with Turkey, was beheaded by Islamic State militants, according to a video posted Sept. 13 on a website associated with the group.In West Africa, where more than 4,000 emergency workers have been deployed, first responders like Casey are battling one of the deadliest diseases on Earth, picking up where local authorities can’t cope to help care for the sick and contain the virus.
Sierra Leone’s government, for example, asked the Red Cross to take over a hospital in Kenema, the country’s third-largest city and one of the Ebola hotspots, said Jean-Pierre Taschereau, head of emergency operations at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. More than 300 health workers have been infected and about half have died.
Ukraine, Liberia
On July 5, Casey was pulled out of the Ukrainian city of Sviatohirsk, where he slept in a hotel whose windows rattled from shelling and gunfire, after two weeks to rush back to the Philippines, where he worked to help rebuild hospitals decimated by Super Typhoon Haiyan in November. Later that month he was told he was needed in Sierra Leone, which declared a state of emergency after aid workers said it had become the epicenter of the worst Ebola outbreak on record. He landed in Freetown, the capital, on Aug. 6 before moving on to Monrovia on Aug. 20.Aid groups like Doctors Without Borders, based in Geneva, and the International Medical Corps, founded in 1984 by American emergency-room physician Robert Simon, are also juggling crises in Gaza, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Iraq and Syria.
“We haven’t seen this many disasters or emergencies at the same time,” said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health security. “But the ingredients for why we’re here are things which are not going to go away.”
On the contrary, a lack of manpower and facilities to cope with the Ebola outbreak has allowed the virus to flourish.
Taxi Danger
Taxis filled with entire families crisscross Monrovia, seeking a treatment bed for a sick relative. When they find none, they return home. Their desperate search means regular cabs and motorbike taxis have become hotbeds for potential transmission, and the subsequent return to their community means they will inevitably infect others there, the WHO said in a bleak analysis of the situation around Monrovia published last week.At least 500 international health experts and 1,000 more local medical staff are needed to contain the outbreak, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said on Sept. 12.
“The team is overwhelmed and cannot offer more than palliative care,” Doctors Without Borders said this month. “People continue to become ill and are dying in their villages and communities. In Sierra Leone, highly infectious bodies are rotting in the streets.”
‘Complex’ Emergency
Casey and his staff are racing to get a new treatment center open. He spends time meeting with members of the ministry of health to discuss salaries for staff working on the Ebola outbreak and has also been engaging with the Clinton Foundation, the WHO and the U.S. Agency for International Development to address the dire shortage of protective equipment for medical staff so they don’t get infected.“Ebola is the most complex health emergency in the world right now,” he said. “I’ve seen many dire situations - from the earthquake in Haiti to refugee camps in South Sudan. I think what we’re facing here is among the most challenging situations I’ve come across.”
The virus has affected nearly 5,000 people and killed more than 2,400 in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. More medical staff are urgently needed to man treatment centers and to rotate out exhausted doctors, said Taschereau of the Red Cross.
“We have less than half the staff we need,” he said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. “When people are fatigued, that’s when they make mistakes and that’s when they get infected.”
Help Wanted
One of three heads of emergency operations for the Red Cross group, Taschereau just returned from seven weeks in Guinea and Sierra Leone. Before that he spent two months in the Central African Republic, where a protracted conflict between Muslim rebel groups and Christian militia has destroyed the country’s public health structure.The U.S. Agency for International Development changed the home page of its website to create a large clickable banner that reads: “Ebola Outbreak: Qualified Health Workers Sign Up Here.”
The WHO estimates more than 20,000 people may be infected before the outbreak can be controlled, and curbing the epidemic will cost at least $1 billion.
“Our usual model is out the window,” Vickie Hawkins, an executive director at Doctors Without Borders, where she’s worked since 1998. “I can’t recall a period like this where the levels of humanitarian need that we see in multiple emergencies around the world are so high.”
No Home
The last time Casey, 32, flew home to the U.S. to spend time with his family was almost a year ago, when he returned for 48 hours to attend a cousin’s wedding in New Jersey. His dog lives in Bangkok, his furniture is kept in a storage unit in Chicago and when pressed for an address, he says he gives that of his parents, near Philadelphia.Even with the high risk of disease and injury, he says he has never regretted pursuing his career with the International Medical Corps to contribute to real outcomes and help save lives.
“We don’t hesitate -- we respond,” he said. “That’s why we’re on the front lines in so many places around the world.”
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