DAKAR – Dr. Mamadu Baldeh can’t forget the 18-year-old who came into his hospital with COVID-19, gasping for air until the day he died.
This suffering was all too real for Baldeh, who battles asthma just as that young man did.At the time, Baldeh, 32, was the only physician treating COVID-19 patients at Sierra Leone’s main public hospital.“This moved me significantly and made me very worried at the time,” the doctor recalled of the young man, one of dozens who has now died from the virus at Connaught Hospital, in the capital, Freetown. “And really I couldn’t figure out how or why I kept my composure.”The patient was so young, restless and wasn’t responding well to any of the attempted treatments, Baldeh said, recounting how difficult it was.