Ambulances often get blocked as they move to deal with Marburg related emergencies.
Rwanda has received well deserved praise, for its exemplary response to the Marburg virus outbreak in the country. Such praise will come as no surprise, to anyone familiar with the professionalism of the country’s institutions, especially in times of emergency.
Equally unsurprising, however, will be the information that the country’s motorists have routinely got in the way of ambulances, as they rushed patients infected with the virus to be isolated for treatment.
It can be stated, without fear of contradiction: Rwanda has contained the The Marburg Virus Disease (MVD), outbreak. The manner of the country’s response, prompted the Director-General of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr Jean Kaseya, to refer to the country as a “school” for how to respond to these increasingly regular epidemics and pandemics.
Fourteen people have been lost to the virus, most of them health workers. But as of 12th October, there have been no new cases, and no deaths. Eighteen people have now recovered, counting two more that have been successfully treated, and overall, 3,377 people have been traced and tested.
Six hundred and twenty vaccine doses have been administered, mostly to health workers, who are on the frontline of the fight against the disease, and others deemed to be in a position that is vulnerable to the virus. More people will be vaccinated, as more vaccines are secured.
Everyone else continues to be encouraged, to seek medical help, or telephone the emergency number, 114, if they suspect that they may have been exposed to an infected person, or they feel what could be MVD symptoms: raised temperature, headache, often severe headache, aching joints, and feeling weak.
Anyone who may have come in contact with an infected, or suspected person, is urged to report the contact on 114, or their local health centre, even if they feel perfectly well. The disease has an incubation period of between 2-21 days, during which period, the infected person can feel perfectly healthy. And when these symptoms begin to show, they are sudden, with a fatality rate that varies between 24-88%.
Ambulances have played a vital role in tracing and transporting contacts.
Rwanda health authorities have managed to lower this rate considerably, through timely, aggressive medical intervention, but their chances of saving the infected patient are greatly reduced, if they are not informed at the earliest suspicion of possible infection.
And when they are informed, there is no time to lose. Motorists who fail to properly give way to an ambulance, which may be transporting an MVD infected patient to a treatment centre, are literally reducing that patient’s chances of survival. It is as stark as that.
Failure to make way for ambulances is so widespread, that the Minister of Health, Dr Sabin Nsanzimana, made a point of asking motorists to please generally make way when they see an ambulance, but especially during this MVD outbreak, where every minute counts, even more so than usual.
It is undoubtedly more a lack of road sense and etiquette among motorists, than any ill intent, but while that is at least something, it is cold comfort to a patient who needs to get to a hospital in the quickest time possible.
The minister observed that rather than allow the ambulance to pass, motorists see it as an opportunity to move through traffic themselves. No ill intent perhaps, but mind boggling self centeredness.
On the whole however, the authorities have had nothing but thanks for how the nation has come together to fight the disease. It is just the motorists, who need to be cured of the selfish virus, which seems to infect them as soon as they turn the ignition key of their engine, as though it were something in the fuel.
