A WIRRAL man who put his life on the line to play his part in the fight against Ebola says it was the support of his wife and family that made his time in Sierra Leone possible.

When an urgent appeal was sent out for biomedical scientists to volunteer to help tackle the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Alex Warrington jumped at the chance to help.

The father-of-two was part of a 16-strong lab team deployed to Sierra Leone by the UK Government in January.

The 25-year-old, from Wallasey, spent five weeks in the disease-ridden country testing blood and swab samples from people considered to be at risk.

Alex – who has worked at Wirral University Teaching Hospital Trust’s lab facility in Bromborough for two years – today spoke to the Globe about his time in Sierra Leone’s fourth largest city, Makeni, in which he saw many survivors leaving the treatment centre.

“Driving down the streets you wouldn’t know you were in a country being ravished by this disease,” said Alex, who arrived in Makeni on January 21.

“On the roadside you wouldn’t see any dead bodies and there were no obvious signs of infection. It seemed quite quiet, as if there wasn’t a problem.

“That was a really good thing because numbers had come down quite a bit but it was also a bit worrying because people can become complacent.”

Before heading to Sierra Leone, Alex completed a week’s training with Public Health England in Salisbury, giving him the chance to get to grips with the dangerous work he would be doing one he arrived in West Africa.

Once in Makeni, the team worked in a treatment centre built by the British Army Royal Engineers and funded by the Department for International Development.

Wirral Globe:
Alex Warrington, from Wallasey, spent five weeks in Makeni testing blood samples of those potentially infected with Ebola.

Alex said: “My job was to test samples – primarily blood and swabs – from patients in the treatment centre who were considered to possibly have Ebola – it was considered very dangerous.”

He was also tasked with testing samples from bodies from the surrounding areas to check if they could be buried in the traditional way.

“Ebola has taken a lot of the traditional methods away from people in the way they cannot wash bodies or bury them locally in the village,” explained Alex.

Working in the lab six days a week involved Alex handling potentially infected samples in a flexible film isolator and inactivating the virus – the most dangerous task.

He returned to Heathrow last month and was given a Category Level 1, meaning there was “no risk”, and returned to work on March 2.

Alex, who has a two-year-old son and eight-year-old stepson with wife Natalie said he had the full support of his family during his deployment.

He said: “When Public Health England sent the email out asking for volunteers, I wasn’t thinking about going out but Natalie suggested I should.

“She has been very supportive throughout. There was Wi-Fi put in the place we were staying when we were over there but it was very sketchy so we couldn’t Facetime or anything like that – I was able to send them photographs on Facebook though so it was ok.”

Asked how his work colleagues felt about his time in West Africa, Alex said: “They were very supportive. They all received the same email that I received. I think there’s always a bit of trepidation when someone volunteers to go out to something like that but management have always been very supportive.

“They were just glad that someone from our trust could go out and represent the NHS in Africa.”

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Earlier this year, Dr Marx Wilcox returned from Sierra Leone after spending five weeks treating patients with the deadly Ebola virus.

The 26-year-old from Ness was part of a 30-strong group of NHS volunteers deployed to Sierra Leone by the UK Government in November.

Dr Willcox, a GP Registrar at Eastham Group Practice, returned to the UK in January.