Not over yet

From the window of his home in northern Liberia, missionary Travis Sheets looks across a small swamp and into the womb of West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak: “We’re about a stone’s throw from where it all started.”

On a recent afternoon, from his perch in the city of Ganta, Sheets described what he sees just across the border in neighboring Guinea: dusty hills dotted with vacant homes left empty by families wiped out by the Ebola virus.

As Ebola germinated in Guinea early last year, some victims trekked into Liberia, unaware of their infections or seeking medical help in the capital city of Monrovia. By June, Liberia was overwhelmed, its fraught medical system collapsed, and the virus spread to Sierra Leone.

In August, officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency—nearly five months after they knew the outbreak had begun—and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offered dire predictions: Ebola could infect as many as 1.4 million people in West Africa in four months.

Thankfully, those predictions fizzled.

By mid-December, Ebola cases dropped dramatically as more international help arrived. Last month, WHO reported the lowest number of Ebola cases so far this year: 45 infections in Guinea, 33 in Sierra Leone, and one in Liberia.

Still, despite the welcomed decrease, the virus ravaged West Africa as the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history: At least 25,000 people were infected, and at least 10,000 people died, though many experts believe the numbers are likely far higher.

These days, Ebola’s damage is measured less by hazmat suits and isolation wards and more by deepened poverty, ongoing health problems, and traumatized survivors.

For Africans in all three countries, these effects could linger for years, as the need for longer-range help continues. And until Ebola cases drop to zero, the danger of another outbreak remains.

From his home in Ganta, Sheets sees the deeper problems and possibilities everyday: “It’s not over.”

SHEETS DIDN’T COME TO LIBERIA TO FIGHT EBOLA. He came to grow food.

In 2012, Sheets and his wife, Gina, founded Hope in the Harvest Missions International and soon developed a school of agriculture at the Liberia International Christian College in Ganta. They brought deep-rooted experience: Travis was a successful farmer, and Gina was the director of Indiana’s Department of Agriculture.

Ten days after Gina left her government post, she joined Travis, compelled by one striking statistic: Liberia imports nearly 90 percent of its food. A brutal civil war in the 1990s forced villagers to flee their lands, and a generation lost its knowledge of farming.

Today a nearby market sells eggs from India, Travis notes, as no local supply exists. He conducts three-day farming workshops in remote areas, and the couple developed a working farm at the university. Two years after launching the school’s agricultural program, 78 of the university’s 200 students are pursuing a degree in agriculture. The Sheetses hope to train Liberian graduates eventually to run the program—but Ebola halted their progress.

After the outbreak, all schools in Liberia closed. Most reopened just last month. It’s a complicated process, as the government requires new Ebola protocols. For the Christian university, those protocols include more security, nurses, and other staff. The cost: about $35,000.

Meanwhile, the town of Ganta was hit hard. Forty-seven people died in a three-day period. Some children lost one or both parents, like thousands of newly orphaned children across the country.

The UN promised $150 to families caring for orphans. But during visits to nine villages in the Ganta area in March, Gina said she spoke with families taking care of at least 150 orphans: Only one family had received UN money.

For the Sheetses, lasting help doesn’t come with cash gifts. Instead, the couple opened a day labor program that allows local residents to work on farming and maintenance projects at the school.

The residents earn a wage, eat a meal, and hear Christian encouragement. A hired cook buys supplies from local markets. Vendors set up outside the fence to sell wares to the day laborers, says Gina: “You see a whole little micro-economy because 47 people now have jobs.”

The couple is thankful for well-placed aid, but they hope more help will come to Liberia in the form of mentoring and Christian discipleship, particularly for a young population. “They don’t need millions of dollars,” says Gina. “They need people who come live among them, exhibit godly lives, and guide them into the future that they are capable of growing.”

SCOTT MYHRE HAS LIVED AMONG AFRICANS FOR 21 YEARS. He and his wife, Jennifer, serve as physicians in Kenya with the Christian mission group Serge (formerly World Harvest).

In 2007, the couple worked in Uganda during an Ebola outbreak and lost one of their closest friends to the disease. When the virus hit West Africa last year, Scott wanted to help; but he found it wasn’t as easy as he imagined.

Myhre says he applied to five organizations, offering his medical services, and heard little until late last year, when he accepted an offer from the ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. The ELWA Hospital served almost all early Ebola patients in Liberia, staffed in part by American missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who both survived the virus.

Airline officials halted many flights from Kenya to Liberia since the Ebola outbreak, so Myhre took a circuitous route: Nairobi to London to Brussels to Monrovia. He arrived to discover a country with no power grid and grinding poverty. At the ELWA Hospital, he relieved physician Rick Sacra, another Christian doctor who survived Ebola, but returned (see “There and back again,” Dec. 13, 2014).

Myhre says he didn’t treat Ebola patients, but often wondered when patients arrived with fevers and vomiting. Malaria and Ebola exhibit nearly identical early symptoms, he said: “So you suit up and check them out.”

The physician says many Liberians likely suffered from other diseases and death during the Ebola outbreak because medical services were so limited, and many patients were afraid to go to a hospital.

One sad example: Myhre watched a four-day-old baby die from tetanus, a disease preventable when a mother is immunized. He said the young mother perhaps didn’t get a vaccination because she didn’t get prenatal care during the Ebola epidemic: “I think there’s a lot of disability and death we’ll never know about.”

Myhre gives most praise to local staff who worked at the hospital during the entire crisis. Jerry Brown, a Liberian physician, continues to lead the clinic. The Liberian government promised bonus money to medical workers, Myhre said, but as of February the staff hadn’t received any payment.

Leaving for Myhre wasn’t easy either: Kenyan regulations don’t allow travelers from Liberia to enter the country until they’ve been quarantined 21 days. The physician traveled thousands of miles to his parents’ home in San Francisco for the quarantine period.

There officials at the California Department of Public Health monitored him closely: They issued a quarantine notice, forbidding him to use public transport or go into public places. He also followed a twice-daily ritual: During a video Skype call with a public health nurse, he took his temperature while she watched, and then he showed her the reading.

On the day we spoke, Myhre had completed his quarantine and was headed back to Kenya. But his thoughts remained with needy populations in Liberia and other affected countries: “Nobody is untouched.”

THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY, Melvin Korkor is still touched by the virus that nearly killed him.

The Liberian served as a physician at a rural hospital nearly 200 miles south of Monrovia. After two nurses fell ill (and later died), Korkor continued to treat patients until he developed Ebola symptoms. He called his wife from a nearby treatment center, and said he told her he needed two things: “My Bible and an open IV-line.”

Korkor survived his bout with Ebola, but later came to the United States for further treatment. From his sister’s home near Washington, D.C., Korkor says he still struggles with extreme joint pain—common for some Ebola survivors. He’s seeking treatment so he can return and serve in a rural area without the advanced medical care.

In the meantime, he talks with staff at the Liberian hospital daily, and says the clinic hasn’t had an Ebola case since January. Some health workers remain nervous while dozens of cases remain in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Korkor says he also talks with his wife and three children each day. For them, Ebola survival brings other challenges: Community members stigmatize his family because they were close to a survivor. He says he expects that stigma to remain, even though he’s recovered: “They think we are not normal.”

Still, the Catholic physician is thankful for his recovery and ongoing treatment, and says he credits God with his survival. During his dark days of illness, he remembers drinking fluid, forcing down food, and praying a simple plea he continues to pray for himself and Liberia: “God help me.