A Boston Doctor vs. Ebola (Q&A with Dr. Nahid Bhadelia)
Original article from: Boston Magazine posted in December 2014 Issue. By Melissa Malamut
What Nahid Bhadelia remembers most from her trip to treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone—12 days of working with desperately ill people in a country where the disease has killed thousands—is not being able to touch her patients.
“There were so many children who lost all their family, and they were in those units alone, some of them under five years of age,” she recalled. “You want to reach down and really comfort them, but all they can see is your eyes. You’re completely covered. You want to pet them, you want to caress them, but you have double gloves on.”
An epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center, the Brookline-raised Bhadelia, 37, has spent the past few years designing emergency protocols for Boston University’s controversial planned Level 4 lab. The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories would allow BU to study deadly viruses like Ebola in a controlled environment—a very different situation than the one Bhadelia faced in Sierra Leone, dealing with a fast-moving pandemic.
“It was physically grueling. [We] were throwing back Gatorade, Tang, and water,” says Bhadelia, who lost six pounds during those 12 days. “It’s so tough physically, but also emotionally. As physicians on this side of the ocean, we are not used to losing so many of our patients.”
We spoke to Bhadelia on the eve of her return to Sierra Leone. She has a third trip scheduled for January.