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As a paramedic, I recently responded to a call in a local store for a female who may have been having a seizure. When I entered the store, staff greeted me at the door and guided me several aisles down to a female lying on her side on the floor. Store staff had already redirected customers away from the scene while another staff member was down by the injured woman’s side, keeping her calm.

Without a doubt, stepping over the threshold to leave an Ebola treatment centre for the last time gives a patient a certain degree of euphoria; against many odds they have survived this highly contagious and deadly disease. However, the grim reality of day-to-day survival looms ahead as many have lost the breadwinner of the family, or their entire family, and their possessions have been destroyed, burned or disinfected with chlorine solution to avoid the further spread of the disease.

In celebration of March Is Red Cross Month, we’re honouring Helena Hardwick, who left her remote prairie ranch to volunteer overseas as an ambulance driver during the Second World War.

​Thanks to the generous support of Canadians and the government of Canada, the Red Cross has been making an impact in the fight against the Ebola outbreak. From preparedness and awareness activities to treating people with Ebola at Red Cross-run treatment centres, the response has been tremendous -- and is not yet over.

When Ebola first came to this village, I felt bad. Because of Ebola, there was a lot of suffering, many people died, and we had setbacks in our farming activities. It was scary, especially because we were isolated and I couldn’t visit anyone.

When Canadian Red Cross delegate Nicolas Verdy arrived in Vanuatu shortly after Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm, made landfall, he was amazed at the amount of destruction to buildings and vegetation but also at the resiliency of the people.

The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world.

It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to work in an Ebola treatment centre. Most Canadian Red Cross aid workers try to anticipate what they will see and experience on a day-to-day basis but quickly realize that the experience is not what they thought it would be. Nikola Latinovic, an aid worker from Windsor, Ontario, found this to be the case during his four-week mission in Kono, Sierra Leone.