Pregnant women in Liberia becoming victims of the ebola outbreak [View all]

[uppityperson]

I found a couple articles talking about the problems pregnant women, and people with other non-ebola health issues, are having in Liberia. They help explain how awful things are.

If you can't prove you don't have ebola, you are not admitted to a hospital, if you can find one open, and if they have an open bed. If you can't prove you do have ebola, you are not admitted to an ebola ward.

If you are having pregnancy/birth complications, more common if you have not had prenatal care which is getting more and more difficult to find, you give birth in unsanitary unsafe places unattended by medical people. Or you die. Or both.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/ebola-outbreak-pregnant-women_n_5901816.html

How Pregnant Women Are Becoming Victims Of The Ebola Outbreak

In an effort to keep the virus contained, Fatumata Fofana was denied access to a hospital in July because she didn't have Ebola.

Amid being transferred to two different clinics, the pregnant Liberian woman developed medical complications while still in labor. Fofana and her baby died.

Unfortunately, Fofana's story is not uncommon in Liberia's capital city of Monrovia. Pregnant women without the virus are suffering the consequences of the region's increasingly detrimental Ebola outbreak, as the nation's overwhelmed health care system continues to buckle, The Washington Post reported. When compared to the summer months of 2013, Liberia experienced a 14 percent drop (52 percent to 38 percent) in infants delivered by a skilled birth attendant, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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“If you stub your toe now in Monrovia, you’ll have a hard time getting care, let alone having a heart attack or malaria,” Sheldon Yett, the Liberia representative for UNICEF, told The Washington Post. “It’s a tremendous threat to children and a tremendous threat to families.”....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/with-ebola-crippling-the-health-system-liberians-die-of-routine-medical-problems/2014/09/20/727dcfbe-400b-11e4-b03f-de718edeb92f_story.html

With Ebola crippling the health system, Liberians die of routine medical problems

While the terrifying spread of Ebola has captured the world’s attention, it also has produced a lesser-known crisis: the near-collapse of the already fragile health-care system here, a development that may be as dangerous — for now — as the virus for the average Liberian.

Western experts said that people here are dying of preventable or treatable conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and the effects of high blood pressure and diabetes, such as strokes. Where services do exist, Ebola has complicated the effort to provide them by stoking fear among health-care workers, who sometimes turn away sick people or women in labor if they can’t determine whether the patient is infected. And some people, health-care workers said, will not seek care, fearful that they will become infected with Ebola at a clinic or hospital.

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When compared with 2013, the period of May to August 2014 saw a sharp drop in the percentage of infants delivered by a skilled birth attendant (52 percent to 38 percent); the percentage of women who received prenatal care within six weeks of confirming their pregnancies (41 percent to 25 percent) and women who receive treatment for malaria (47.8 percent to 29.4 percent), among other measures.

For a few weeks in August, the government ordered all health facilities nationwide closed because so many nurses were becoming infected with Ebola. “If you broke a leg and you needed surgery, sorry,” said Sister Barbara Brillant, national coordinator of the Liberian Catholic Church’s health council. “If you had appendicitis and needed surgery, sorry. It’s not available.”

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Pregnant women are especially vulnerable in the new environment. While treatment of some kinds of problems can be deferred, the arrival of a child cannot. As a Washington Post photographer watched one day last week, a woman in labor arrived at the JFK Ebola treatment center in a taxi, sent by workers at the hospital’s recently reopened maternity ward because she had no evidence she was free of Ebola. But no one came to the Ebola facility’s gate — and even if someone had, the woman’s chances of gaining entry were next to zero. With no evidence that she had Ebola, the isolation center would not bring her inside among those who have the virus...