A Healing Touch

They’re called lullaby singers, and the soothing presence of these Ebola survivors brings comfort to those battling the deadly virus

IMAGINE the terror: knowing you’ve contracted a deadly virus and living out your last days in agony and isolation, unable to have any contact with your loved ones.

For patients with Ebola, the treatment centres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are a scary place to be. To stop them spreading the highly contagious disease as they teeter between life and death, they’re confined to hermetically sealed bio-secure units where medical staff, clad head-to-toe in decontamination suits, tend to them gingerly.

There’s little that can be done to help them. For most the disease is an almost certain death sentence but at least doctors in the DRC – which has been in the grip of a year-long Ebola outbreak that’s claimed more than 2 000 lives – have found a way to offer patients more of a human touch.

In almost every transparent plastic cell in the country’s treatment centres, a survivor of Ebola is on hand to provide solace and encouragement. Because they’ve all had the disease, they’re now immune so there’s no need for them to wear protective garb.

So soothing is their presence that they’ve become known as “lullaby singers”. With the World Health Organisation having declared the DRC’s Ebola outbreak a global health emergency, it’s hoped these survivors may hold the key to helping others defeat the disease.

Mwamini Masiki volunteered to be a lullaby singer in January after winning a gruelling month-long battle with the virus that killed her young nephew.

She’s currently looking after an unnamed baby boy, delivered in one of the bio-secure units at the Ebola treatment centre in Beni, a town in eastern DRC’s North Kivu province that has recorded more than 320 deaths since the outbreak began.

The baby, just two days old when Mwamini started tending to him, may or may not have Ebola.