Photo courtesy of Wilson Idahor, Rotary Club of Monrovia

By Monique Cooper-Liverpool, Rotary Club of Monrovia, Liberia

We are just past the five-month anniversary of Liberia’s first encounter with the Ebola virus. We are more than 40 days into a declared national health emergency, a month into a national state of emergency, and on the third week of an imposed national curfew, the first since our civil conflict ended in 2003. Nine international airlines have cancelled or suspended service to Liberia, with only two international carriers continuing to operate, overbooked and overpriced.

As of two weeks ago, 613 lives have been lost to the Ebola virus, a total of confirmed, probable or suspected cases. Countless others have also died because the frail remnants of the decimated hospitals, clinics, and health centers simply cannot cope or health care workers are too afraid to treat more common illnesses or conduct routine procedures.

Support campaign begins

The Ebola virus has hit us at a vulnerable time: we are already on our third successive year of budget short-falls and low global prices in our export commodities, with a resulting high inflation and soaring exchange rate.

Obviously, this has been more than a clarion call for us as the Rotary Club of Monrovia and our Ebola support campaign began at our leadership induction on 4 July. During her speech, our club president, Vicki Cooper-Enchia, committed the club to raise $1,000 to purchase gloves for health care workers responding to Ebola patients. We reached the target that same day and donated 10,000 gloves to the Ministry of Health on 7 July.

Since then, the number of recorded cases has nearly tripled and we’ve also stepped up our resource mobilization and response. Through our club members who work in the Ministry of Health and Liberia’s largest teaching hospital, the John F. Kennedy Medical Center, we established contact with national response leaders to get accurate information on priority needs.

Over the past six weeks, our club has raised $21,000 from organizations, companies, and individuals to support our Ebola response campaign. This tremendous generosity has allowed us to provide urgently needed items to hospitals, Ebola holding facilities, and the Ministry of Health.  As we continue to donate, the needs also continue increasing in efforts to contain this deadly virus.

Donations

Our donations to the government have included 10,000 examination gloves, 3,000 pairs of sterile surgical gloves, 1,200 pairs of gynecological gloves, 100 plastic buckets with spouts for hand-washing, 80 PVC covered mattresses for patients in holding and treatment facilities, 120 pairs of rubber rain boots for health care workers, fuel coupons for Ebola response vehicles, soap, bed sheets and mattress covers, tarpaulin for reconditioning a temporary hospital waiting area, and assorted medicines and food items for patients undergoing treatment.

We have set up our project on Rotary Ideas, Rotary’s crowdsourcing platform, where you can learn more about how you can help our effort. We are committed to doing more and are hoping to harness the goodwill of Rotarians around the world.

• Read Rotary’s response to the Ebola outbreak
• Browse other projects on Rotary Ideas
• Learn about Rotary’s work in our six areas of focus

This post first appeared on Rotary Service Connection