MONROVIA, Montserrado – Dr. Rick Sacra, a missionary and Ebola survivor, says Liberia needs family physicians. During a brief stay in Liberia after overcoming his encounter with Ebola, Sacra spoke about his efforts to start a family practice residency program. He also provided insights on how the Ebola outbreak had devastated the health sector.
Sacra is a family physician from Worcester, Massachusetts. He contracted the Ebola virus in Liberia last August while volunteering as a medical doctor with SIM, a Christian international mission organization, at the ELWA Hospital in Paynesville.
He is one of the four Americans who contracted Ebola in Liberia including Nancy Writebol, Kent Brantly, and Ashoka Mukpo.
Sacra contracted Ebola in the third week of August while working with deceased pregnant women who did not show typical signs of Ebola. He was evacuated to America and after fighting the disease for 20 days he was released from Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Sacra was on a short visit in February to Liberia, the place he calls his second home, when The Bush Chicken interviewed him. He has lived and worked in Liberia from 1995 to 2010.
Ebola a Strain on Liberia’s Healthcare
Sacra said that Ebola had put stress on Liberia’s health system.
He said, “Many of the facilities are either not functioning or half functioning and we need to make sure that all of them have the supplies they need in terms of drugs, PPEs and all the things that are needed.”
He emphasized the need for all health facilities in the country to return to addressing other health issues.
“One problem with the Ebola [outbreak] was that, we all focused our attention strictly on Ebola and forgot about other health problems,” Sacra said. “We have to be prepared to provide care for those other things too, like malaria and other infections.”
“We had a case this week at the hospital of tetanus in a newborn baby,” Sacra said.  “I have not seen that in a long time and that is because of the Ebola situation. The young lady normally could have gone to a clinic somewhere and received her vaccine but because she did not get her that [and] her baby died.’’
The head of the World Health Organization’s vaccine unit, Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, said on Wednesday that immunization levels in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone had dropped by as much as 30 percent at the peak of the Ebola outbreak.
Dr. Sacra at ELWA with a baby he delivered. Photo: Rick Sacra
The Need for Family Physicians
Sacra also commented on the need to train Liberian doctors to become family physicians, providing primary care for patients of various ages and ailments.
Sacra has been developing his Christian Family Practice Residency program since 2013, according to his personal blog. He said the biggest obstacle has been recruiting the faculty to run the program.
“We are involved in trying to start a training program, but we need the faculty here on the ground to do the training,” he said.
He mentioned that he had been working with the Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons to determine the specifics of the residency program.
LCPS is a governmental body established in 2013 to train medical specialists. LCPS is also the entity that needs to approve Sacra’s residency program at ELWA.
“Right now in Liberia, the College has just started residencies,” he said. “So they are doing pediatrics, surgeries, and internal medicine but we also feel there is a need for primary care doctors who have skills to be what we call family physicians — to provide care, whether in the hospital or the rural areas.”
Featured photos courtesy of Rick Sacra
