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24 October 2014updated 03 Aug 2021 7:48am

Status update: the World Service’s reports on ebola

Having listened to the show for three weeks, I am repeatedly struck by its unusually fluctuating tone.

By Antonia Quirke

News About Ebola
BBC World Service

At the time of writing, the information and analysis bulletin News About Ebola (weekdays, 7.50pm) had been picked up by 53 local radio partners of the BBC World Service across West Africa – from Sierra Leone’s Radio Democracy in Freetown to Liberia’s Radio Cape Mount and Guinea’s Radio Nostalgie. Known to be a source of reliable information, the show receives up to 3,500 texts a day.

In an email, one of the presenters, Amara Bangura, tells me that the questions from the public cover everything imaginable, not least ebola’s rumoured resistance to a particular brand of rum. Having listened to the show for three weeks, I am repeatedly struck by its unusually fluctuating tone. Using an interview with a World Health Organisation official, a local politician or a person on the street, one programme might be quite formal, almost distant, where others seem to contain the delirium of wounded national identity. Most memorable was a customer at a Freetown market considering the crates of rotten eggs and mould-covered cassava leaves in front of her and saying that opportunists had priced even these too high to buy. And one sharply edited feature at the end of the first week of this month was striking: a UK medic confirmed that up to 600 NHS workers have admirably volunteered their services.

Then to a nurse on the ground in 30°C heat and 100 per cent humidity, describing her protective clothing: “One pair of boots, one waterproof overall, two pairs of gloves taped at the wrists, a waterproof protective hood, goggles, face mask and then a plastic apron over all of it.”

Recent reports that many health workers are prepared to strike unless provided with even more protective barriers couldn’t fail to fill the listener with awe. “Often the fingers in my gloves are full of liquid,” the nurse had concluded, her voice exquisitely neutral. Then she shrugged one simple word: “Sweat.” 

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