Body Team 12: The story of an Oscar-nominated Red Cross Ebola responder

Garmai Sumo welcomes us with a pleasant smile. Dressed in an elegant African printed top and basic jeans, she looks radiant with her new hairstyle. “I have put away the gloves, mask and gown. Ebola is now over!” she exclaims, transforming her smile into a real burst of laughter before hastening to add, “but washing my hands remains a daily reflex.”

The young woman of 29 was among the 5,000 volunteers trained and mobilized by the Liberia National Red Cross Society during the Ebola outbreak, displaying courageous efforts to stop the disease through the provision of safe and dignified burials, contact tracing, psychosocial support, and surveillance and social mobilization.

Garmai was the only female on a team of 12 Red Cross volunteers conducting safe and dignified burials (SDB) for Ebola victims, called “Body team 12”. It was one out of 144 teams mobilized across the country. For Garmai, the past year has seen the most intense moments of her life, but also some of the proudest.

A great deal of courage and heroism

“Picking up bodies on the streets, at homes and other places was not an easy task. Sometimes you go, people do not want you take the body as they want to bury themselves their loved ones,” she explains.

It took a great deal of courage for Garmai to join a burial team, as the bodies were potentially extremely contagious. All it would take was one mistake to contract the virus and, in a community burial, to spark another spike in infections.

“I was aware of the level of risk but I was well trained and had the faith that Ebola cannot destroy my country. It destroyed so many lives. It killed doctors, so many people, entire families. Today, some houses are locked up. So we needed people to stop the virus,” says Garmai.

- See more at: http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/africa/liberia/body-team-12-the-story-of-an-oscar-nominated-red-cross-ebola-responder--72057/#sthash.dprfjQep.dpuf