BY Taiwo George
The World is full of heroes. Day after day, and from country to country, there are dozens of people who are staking their lives for the overall well-being of the society — only that many of them die pretty unknown and recognised.
One of them is Sierra Leonean physician, Dr. Sheik Umar Khan.
Upon the deadliest-ever outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) began in February from Guinea and spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, Khan led a team of other doctors to mount a charge against the killer virus. After helping to preserve the lives of more than 100 victims of the disease, Khan was discovered, on July 22, 2014, to have himself contracted the disease. Exactly seven days later, he died.
Here are four things to remember about a man whose name will positively resonate whenever ‘Ebola’ is mentioned.
1. HE HAD BEEN SAVING LIVES BEFORE EBOLA
He gained international attention only recently, following his work on Ebola. But Khan had been in the business of combating life-threatening diseases for more than a decade.
He worked for the Lassa Fever Programme at the Kenema Government Hospital (KGH), Sierra Leone, in the 2000s, at a time when the fever was what Ebola now is. And after Dr. Aniru Conteh, yet another courageous medic, tragically died of Lassa fever in 2005, Khan took on the reins of the prograame.
When Khan died, the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium called him “one of the world’s leading experts in the clinical care of viral hemorrhagic fevers”, while Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) described him “as an extremely determined and courageous doctor who cared deeply for his patients”.
2. YES, HE WAS COURAGEOUS — BUT HE DID NOT WANT TO DIE
“I am afraid for my life, I must say, because I cherish my life,” Khan told Reuters in June, in what has now become about the most remembered line about him.
He knew he was treading dangerous territories.
“Health workers are prone to the disease because we are the first port of call for somebody who is sickened by disease. Even with the full protective clothing you put on, you are at risk.”
In one of a series of measures to avoid the disease, he installed a mirror in his office, which he called his “policeman”, to check for holes in his protective clothing before entering the wards where Ebola patients were isolated.
In the end, his “policeman” failed him, as the virus managed to sneak into his body without the mirror’s notice.
HE LIVED — AND DIED — A HERO
Khan was still alive — albeit sick from Ebola infection — when Sierra Leonean minister for health, Miatta Kargbo, declared him “a national hero”, praising his “tremendous efforts” in fighting a disease that had killed 206 people in the country at the time.
If there was any doubt that he had quickly become a national icon, president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Koroma, showed up at the hospital where Khan was receiving treatment. Little did Koroma know that had he postponed the visit by a day, he would have passed up an unrecoverable opportunity to personally express gratitude to the man who, to a large extent, was the only reason why scores of people are still alive.
4. HE WAS A ‘DOCTOR WITHOUT BORDERS’
It is no coincidence that Khan died in the custody of Doctors Without Borders; he was one himself, having worked within and outside Sierra Leone when his passion demanded.
His medical journey began at the University of Sierra Leone, where he studied Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS), graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery (MBChB) in 2001.
As a young tropical medicine/infectious disease physician, he worked for two years as a medical officer at the directorate of disease prevention and control, at the ministry of health and sanitation.
From 2005 till 2010, he served as physician in charge of HIV/AIDS services at KGH; and from 2006 to 2010, he was physician consultant for the Mano River Union Lassa Fever Network, WHO/Tulane University. He was concurrently contracted by then United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) as a contract physician.
Between 2010 and 2013, he travelled beyond the borders of Sierra leone to Ghana on a residency in Internal Medicine at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana. He also worked at the Connaught Hospital in Freetown during his time as a consultant.
Until his death, he was an associate lecturer at the department of medicine of his alma mater. Sadly, he was was appointed only in January 2014, so he never quite knuckled down to passing on his immense medical knowledge to others.
Khan, like every other human, is indispensable, and yet another doctor will step into his shoes the way he did after the death Lassa Fever-occasioned death of Dr. Conteh.
But will the more-than-100 lives whose recovery from Ebola he spearheaded ever forget him? Impossible.
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