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| Choi Young-mi, center, and two Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone hug each other at a tent set up by an Italian non-governmental organization, Emergency, in Goderich, west of its capital Freetown. / Courtesy of Choi Young-mi |
Ebola volunteer recounts medical isolation after exposure to virus
By Kang Hyun-kyung
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In retrospect, Choi said, the following three weeks, during which she was monitored in an isolation unit at a hospital in Germany to confirm whether or not she was infected with the disease, made her fearless and stronger.
"I was neither scared nor panicked. But I felt a little bit depressed," Choi, an emergency medicine doctor, said about her three weeks of quarantine.
"I felt sad because I couldn't treat patients. I went there after going throughrough training in Korea and Britain, and persuading my family to respect my decision. But my mission was suddenly over after the incident."
Wearing a protective suit that covered her from head to toe, she treated actual and potential Ebola patients at a tent set up by an Italian non-governmental organization, Emergency, in Goderich, in the west of Sierra Leone's capital Freetown.
She said the work was demanding partly because of the shortage of medical staff and partly because of the sultry weather there. However, she said she felt that her work was rewarding because she was on the frontlines of the Ebola crisis, treating patients who were fighting for their lives.
After she was exposed to the virus, the mother of two was isolated in a private room near her house. She celebrated her 44th birthday there on Dec. 31 without her family. Her fellow Korean medical volunteers prepared her seaweed soup, a traditional Korean birthday dish, to cheer her up, which impressed her.
She spent the time reading books until the special aircraft from Germany arrived to take her to the hospital in Berlin for tests to confirm whether or not she was infected with the virus.
The incident, meanwhile, caused a stir at home. The Korean media covered the breaking news about an unnamed health worker who was suspected of having been infected with the Ebola virus.
Choi got many text and chat messages from friends and acquaintances who were worried that she was the health worker mentioned in the media. She was among the first batch of Korean medical volunteers sent to Sierra Leone in December 2014.
Choi lied to them, flatly denying their speculations. She said she didn't want them to worry about her. However, she thought one of her family members should know the truth. Using KakaoTalk, a messaging app, she sent a message to her husband letting him know that she was exposed to the virus. Choi tried to calm her concerned husband down, saying according to her professional view, she should be fine because she had no symptoms of Ebola. Her husband supported her decision to volunteer in Sierra Leone.
On Jan. 3, she was carried on a U.S. air ambulance to the Charite Hospital in Berlin, where she spent the next three weeks. She had tested negative for Ebola five times and was confirmed not to be infected with the virus. She returned to Seoul on Jan. 20.
This period of isolation had a profound impact on her life: Choi said she learned lessons from the experience.
"I became fearless and stronger. I also felt that what people say about certain things is different from what they are. There are certain things that you would never know if you don't put yourself in the situation. My medical stint in Sierra Leone was just like that," she said.
"I often use the phrase ‘opening the door to the unknown world' to describe what I went through in West Africa. Once you get there and do it and see what it is, you'll never have to fear anything again. You'll know that what you had imagined about the world is very different from what it actually is once you explore it."
According to her, the Ebola experience was riskier than the other medical missions she was involved in. Before Sierra Leone, she volunteered in Laos and the Philippines.
Since the first case of Ebola was confirmed in March last year, the deadly virus claimed the lives of over 11,000 people in West Africa, with approximately 4,000 in Sierra Leone alone. The disease's average fatality rate is approximately 50 percent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Despite the precautions they take, health workers are not safe from the deadly virus. According to WHO, nearly 800 medical staff in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were infected with Ebola, resulting in some 500 deaths.
This high risk, however, didn't discourage Choi from exploring Sierra Leone as a medical volunteer. The riskier the mission, she said, the more people learn from it.
This belief prompted her to embark on another risky mission in Nepal in May, days after the country was hit by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 23,000.
Choi said she had always wanted to do something meaningful for the community ever since she went on a short-term medical mission to Laos in December 2013.
Last May, President Park Geun-hye invited Choi and the 23 other Korean medical volunteers in Sierra Leone to the presidential office. The President described them as heroes and heroines who risked their lives to live up to their commitment to save the most vulnerable people. They were awarded with medals from the government.
During the Asia-Europe Meeting in October 2014, President Park pledged to send a medical team to West Africa to help the international community fight the disease. This announcement was followed by the selection of the medical corps for the Sierra Leone mission. The first batch of medical workers was selected in November and sent to Sierra Leone in December. The selected volunteers took a week-long Ebola training in Britain before they headed to the West African country.
The medical dispatch caused a stir in Korea, and public opinion was divided.
Doctor-turned-lawmaker Ahn Hong-joon sided with the government's decision to send the team to fight the epidemic in West Africa. The ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker said Korea couldn't have achieved its miraculous economic growth after the Korean War without international assistance. Now was the time for Korea to give back to the international community, he said.
Ahn claimed that Korea would benefit from joining the global coalition to fight Ebola because the country was not safe from the disease. Sending the medical team to Sierra Leone would help contain the deadly disease, he said.
However, a fellow lawmaker, Woo Sang-ho, disagreed. He claimed that sending medical teams to fight the deadly epidemic was different from sending troops to countries at war or aid workers to countries hit hard by humanitarian crises.
The opposition lawmaker said Korean medical staff had no experience with the Ebola virus and therefore, the medical dispatch was unlikely to help in containing the disease.
Amid the ongoing debate in the legislature, the government sent three medical teams to Sierra Leone, and their mission officially ended in March.
On Nov. 7 this year, the WHO declared Sierra Leone free of Ebola.
