AN Oxfordshire medic has vowed to keep fighting the killer Ebola virus, warning that if allowed to grow, it will soon be “on our doorstep”.

Nurse Andy Gleadle, who has worked for the International Medical Corps (IMC) for 10 years, said if it was not under control soon there could be up to a million cases by the end of January.

He has just spent two weeks in Sierra Leone and said he will keep going back to West Africa until the job is done.

And he said if aid workers and health professionals don’t get the support they need from western govenments the virus could spread to Europe.

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Mr Gleadle, 47, who lives in Faringdon, said: “I will keep going back at least until the end of January because we think and we hope that if we are able to have treatment centres, separate people who have Ebola from the rest and stop it from spreading, then we can get it under control.

“We have a six or eight-week s Continued from page 1
window and if we do not start getting this under control by the end of December or the middle of January it could be up to one million cases by the end of January or the start of February.
“By helping Africa we are helping the world and helping ourselves.
“If this is allowed to grow it will be on our doorstep. We are stopping it coming to Europe.”
Mr Gleadle, director of programme performance and development for the IMC, has been helping to co-ordinate the response in Sierra Leone, leading a team building two new treatment centres for 200 of 7,000 sufferers.
He is due to return to the country this week and will get frontline experience of the virus which has already killed almost 5,000 people, mostly in West Africa.
He said: “I will not be regularly nursing patients but it is part of my job to go through training and work on the ward to make sure the safety measures are working.
“I need to show I have done it myself so nurses and doctors on the wards can trust it.
“It is a very difficult time as you can imagine. People are scared for their children and scared for their futures and the health infrastructure has completely collapsed.”
Mr Gleadle, who had screening for the virus on his return, spoke of the harrowing situation facing doctors and nurses who travel to West Africa but said volunteering to work in the region was something they felt they had to do.
He said: “As medical professionals it is the nature of the beast that you will see a lot of death and suffering.
“When you are a nurse or doctor dealing with Ebola you see a lot of things but you are also at risk of being infected.
“There is a psychological impact that even with the best care you can give 50 per cent of people infected will die.
“When they see so many people dying such a horrible death it is about giving them a dignified way to die and stop them from infecting others.”
Before his first trip Mr Gleadle said the international response to the tragedy unfolding there was too slow.
After experiencing aid efforts in the country first hand he said his view had not changed.
He said: “In the next four weeks IMC will have built another 200 beds, which is good, but there will be maybe another 1,000 new cases, so we are racing to catch up.
“If it gets to the stage of one million cases we will have to move to a new strategy.
“At the moment containment can work but we need more money and more volunteers.”
And Mr Gleadle said he would encourage anyone who could to go to Africa and help, following the lead of himself and others from Oxfordshire.
Oxfam workers Cat Meredith, Jack Frith-Powell and Hannah Davies, who are based at the charity’s offices in Cowley have volunteered to travel to Senegal, Liberia and Sierra Leone respectively.

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