After Ebola: NEIDL Infectious Diseases Expert Returns to Africa

Original article from: BU Today posted on August 27, 2015. by Susan Seligson

Last August, Nahid Bhadelia traveled to Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic’s peak, hermetically clad in the protective spacesuit-like gear of a biosafety level 4 researcher. Funded by the World Health Organization (WHO), Bhadelia went there to share her expertise on infection control and to help care for patients infected with the virus.

A year later, the School of Medicine assistant professor of infectious diseases and director of infection control and medical response at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) returned, this time ungloved and unmasked, to interview African health care and burial workers, many still unpaid for their work during the epidemic. Appalled by their financial plight, Bhadelia recently launched a GoFundMe campaign, Support Sierra Leonean Ebola Workers, with the goal of raising at least $50,000 to help compensate them. As of August 26, donations had reached $13,026.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 13,470 people in Sierra Leone were infected during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and that nearly 4,000 died, along with another 2,500 in neighboring Guinea and 4,800 in Liberia. In May, Newsweek reported that burial workers as well as health care workers were sidelined as $3.3 billion in international relief funds poured in last year to fight the epidemic. Rather than paying frontline workers, most of the money went to United Nations agencies and a score of nongovernmental organizations, fueling protests in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Having witnessed firsthand the tireless efforts of these frontline workers, Bhadelia, who specializes in infection control issues related to emerging pathogens and highly communicable infectious diseases, launched her fundraising campaign on June 19.

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