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Portage Woman Helps Fight Ebola

Abbas Dulleh
/
AP Photo

A Kalamazoo-area woman has begun a campaign to help people in Africa fight the Ebola outbreak there. Dr. Manjerngie Ndebe (pronounced "man-JANG-ee DEH-bay") is the founder of a faith-based healthcare missionary program based in Portage. She says her campaign is focus on the situation in her native country, Liberia.

The Ebola virus has been known since it was discovered in 1976. There have been periodic outbreaks in Africa since then. But the current crisis in several West African countries, including Liberia, is the worst so far. The World Health Organization estimates that the number of Ebola cases could reach 20,000 by November. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control predict there could be almost a million-and-a-half cases by January. Dr. Ndebe says the virus is one of the most lethal known.

“Ebola is a virus that has a 50 to 90 percent chance of death when infected; and in five-to-ten days, if you’re not treated, you do die. Lots of people are dying. The U.S. government is planning to send 3,000 solders there and other governments are responding. I’m from Liberia. I’m a family nurse practitioner based in Portage, Michigan. And I founded a nonprofit called Christian Global Medical Healthcare, Incorporated. One of the countries where it has mission work is in Liberia, so when the Ebola outbreak started we launched on Sep 1st a ‘Fight to end Ebola in Liberia’ fundraiser.”

Reverend Ndebe says the project is selling t-shirts and popcorn to raise money (see details below). She says it will be used to send supplies that are urgently needed in Liberia to help control the spread of the virus.

“We are in need of…protection gear like waterproof gowns, caps, and gloves. We are in need of lots of medication because the hospitals are closed and people who have diabetes, hypertension, also seizures and dysentery are dying because the hospitals are closed so we need medication for that. We need thousands of body bags for people who are dying to be appropriately buried and we need vehicles to reach the counties; the roads are bad. We are also raising fund so that when the acute stage is over (we can) build a clinic at the border with Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, where Ebola started, so that in the future when there is an outbreak of infectious disease of this magnitude we can respond locally and appropriately.”

Officials say about three thousand people have already died during the latest Ebola outbreak, and that number continues to rise every day. Ndebe says the severity of the crisis isn’t really a surprise.

“It is a bigger outbreak this time because where it has occurred is within countries that just came from brutal civil wars. Liberia went to war from 1989 to 2003. I escaped into Guinea and then Guinea had a brief civil war (but) they were able to contain it. Ivory Coast had a civil war and Sierra Leone had a very brutal civil war. So the infrastructures in these nations were destroyed, and therefore, when an epidemic of this magnitude took place, they have no infrastructure to put preventative measures in place. As a result, with an increase in their population, people are in close proximity to each other (and with) poor hygienic practices, cultural practices, the disease spread very quickly, as opposed to in Nigeria where the country had a health care infrastructure, the government was able to put in $10 million and contain it (and) they have not had any more new cases. But the epidemic continues to spread elsewhere. Every five to ten days Ebola incidents continue to multiply and more and more people are being infected.”

Ndebe says work on finding a vaccine or a cure for Ebola may help in the future. But she says that shouldn’t be the focus in what’s happening now.

“What we can do now is prevent people from getting the disease and by teaching health practices: hygiene, training more health care workers to teach the local people how to avoid becoming infected and how to do proper burials, that is what is generally needed. Maybe in the next few months or years to come, when a vaccine is discovered, we can prevent a recurrence of this this magnitude. But for this incident that is going on now, research on a vaccine may not be a quick and do-able response to the problem.”

President Obama recently announced that U.S. military personnel will go to West Africa to help build new clinics and train healthcare workers. Ndebe says she hopes that will have positive results. “I’m sure that if all the planned logistics are put to work we can be able to prevent a forecast of 20,000-plus getting affected and maybe nearly 10,000 dying.”

Ndebe says fundraising sales for the campaign will be held at Christian Global Medical Healthcare, 451 W. Milham, in Portage from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Saturday through November 29.