Ebola survivors commend Chinese medical team

"But for the treatment I received from the Chinese, I should not be alive today," said Memunatu Fofanah when recalling the experience at a Chinese treatment center in Sierra Leone after tested positive for Ebola.

Fofanah, a community health nurse in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, was one of the Ebola survivors thanks to China's aid in consonance with the government and other development partners.

Fofanah said she contracted the Ebola virus through her father who was brought from North of the country very ill. As a nurse she decided to receive some medical care and was later taken to her health clinic at Upper Allen town about 30 km from the city where her father passed away.

A few days later she started feeling sick and developed high fever, then she decided to consult medical attention but was advised to call 117, the Ebola Emergency Response Center.

"I listened to the advice and promptly the command center dispatched an ambulance that conveyed me to the Chinese treatment center at Jui on the outskirts of the city, where I was diagnosed positive of the Ebola virus," said Fofanah.

"My first week in the hospital was not easy. I had lost hope because I had lost considerable weight, vomiting and could hardly work. The Chinese started to give me intravenous fluids as well as treatment for the high fever, this was also coupled with words of consolation that 'I would not die', that 'I would survive," she said.

Fofanah recalled that in deed within two weeks "I must say that I owe my survival to the care and treatment I got at the center for which I am very grateful".

Like Memunatu Fofanah, all the survivors that spoke to Xinhua had similar stories of harrowing experience with the dreaded disease and the support from the Chinese treatment center.

Maseray Kamara, Another Ebola survivor who had lost her five- month-old child, said it was through this confused state of mind that she probably might have contracted the disease.