Ebola survivor and frontline fighter dies after childbirth complications

 Salomé Karwah lost both her parents, her brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and a niece in the Ebola
outbreak that swept Liberia in 2014. Photograph: Adolphus Mawolo/MSF

A woman named a Time magazine person of the year in 2014 for her frontline work fighting Ebola in west Africa has died from childbirth complications in Liberia. Hospital staff were reluctant to treat her because of the stigma that still surrounds the disease, according to her family.

Salomé Karwah lost her parents, her brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and a niece in the Ebola outbreak that swept her home country in August 2014. She also contracted the disease, but survived, along with her sister, Josephine Manley, and her then-fiance, who was to become her husband, James Harris.

Determined to help others, in October 2014, she wrote in the Guardian about her experiences as a survivor and her work as a mental health counsellor at an Ebola treatment centre run by Médecins San Frontières outside Monrovia, Liberia’s capital.

Karwah died on the 21 February, four days after giving birth to her fourth child, Solomon, by caesarian section. Within hours of being discharged from hospital, she went into convulsions, according to her sister. She was rushed back to hospital but no one would touch her, as her foaming mouth and seizures panicked the staff.

“They said she was an Ebola survivor,” Manley told Time magazine. “They didn’t want contact with her fluids. They all gave her distance. No one would give her an injection.”

Karwah died the next day. Manley said she does not know what caused the convulsions, but believes that something could have gone wrong during her caesarian operation. She believes her sister may have had a chance of survival if she had been treated immediately. Instead, “she was stigmatised”, Manley said.

“My heart is broken. Salomé loves her children, her James. The one-year-old, the newborn, they will grow up never remembering their mother’s face,” said Manley.

Salomé Karwah at MSF’s Ebola treatment centre close to Monrovia. Photograph: Ana Lemos/MSF

Ella Watson-Stryker, who worked with Karwah in Liberia for MSF and was also among the Ebola fighters on the 2014 Time cover, said: “To survive Ebola and then die in the larger yet silent epidemic of health system failure … I have no words.”

Vickie Hawkins, MSF’s executive director in the UK, described Karwah as a “brave figurehead” in the fight to end stigma for Ebola survivors.

Hawkins said: “We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Salomé Karwah. Salomé first came to MSF as an Ebola patient and after bravely fighting a disease that killed her parents, she returned to provide mental health support to Ebola patients. She wanted to show people that survival was possible.

“Our many staff who remember working with her speak of her strength and compassion, but also of her smile. She made a huge contribution to MSF’s work at the height of the outbreak in Monrovia.”

In her piece for the Guardian, in 2014, Karwah spoke against the fear and stigma of Ebola, as well as of finding happiness in her new role caring for patients with the disease. She said: “I treat my patients as if they are my children. I talk to them about my own experiences. I tell them my story to inspire them and to let them know that they too can survive.”