9th August 2014: WE AND EBOLA VIRUS

During the two Sunday Masses of 3rd August 2014, in the parish of the Holy Innocents in Matadi, Monrovia, along with the celebration of the Word and participation in the Eucharistic meal, space was given to the intervention of a doctor to inform parishioners on how to prevent infection by the Ebola virus and how to behave in case of infection. The citizens are mobilizing. At the entrance of the shops and churches, or at petrol stations, there are buckets with water mixed with soap and chlorine. Before entering, in fact, it is obligatory to wash the hands.
Unfortunately the infection, which in Liberia began last March with some cases restricted to a defined area, escaped human control and has arrived in the city of Monrovia. In a short time the situation has become dangerous enough to be caught unprepared not only citizens, who have taken lightly the communications transmitted on the radio, but also health care facilities. Just hospitals were one of  sites of the spread of the epidemic. At the news of the first doctors who had contracted Ebola caring for the sick, followed period in which it was difficult to find a doctor at the workplace along with the closure of some hospitals where they had been cases of contamination. In addition, the panic and worry are increasingly disseminating among the population alarmed by the sound of ambulance sirens through the city carrying infected people. One of the actions taken to prevent the outbreak was declared that it had been closed the ministries and issued the order of holiday to avoid the movement of people (adults and youth) for work and study. Meanwhile, the Lord has given us six days of interruption of the rains. They were providential to organize  meetings of people of the communities and inform them about how to prevent infection by the virus and Ebola.
Hard to say how the situation is evolving ... The fact that the doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who cured the sick, and two other collaborators have contracted the virus, aggravates the situation. The Catholic Hospital has been closed since the Administrator of the Hospital died from contact infection and two of his confreres were positive to the test of Ebola virus. Here now the schools are closed for government injunction until further notification.  
Our parishioners are preparing the priestly ordination of the second Liberian Salesian scheduled for August 23.  The Oratory Youth Centre is closed. The Salesian Youth Movement cancelled the planned National Youth Forum. Only few activities take place: daily and Sunday Mass, the administration of the sacraments, the moments of prayer. In the evening, at 18:30, we pray the Rosary together with some boys and girls. In particular, we present to the Lord and the Virgin Mary the invocation for all patients with Ebola, and for those who are willing to care for the sick. We share what the disciples in the boat sinking because of the storm on the lake of Tiberias, they turned to the Lord: "Lord, do you not care that we are sinking?" Let's be always one with the Lord Jesus Christ and let us ask him that our faith may grow and become at least as a mustard seed to move mountains.
In Don Bosco   Don Nicola Ciarapica