Inside Ebola treatment centers in Congo, where survivors bring hope to those who are about to die



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For a patient diagnosed with perhaps the scariest disease in the world, Ebola treatment centers in Congo are a terrifying place.

As soon as their blood tests are positive, the victims are placed in biosecure units and hermetically sealed. Between life and death, the only physical contact they have with the outside world is with doctors dressed in decontamination suits.

There is one exception: in almost all transparent plastic cells, an Ebola survivor, now immune to the disease, is on hand to provide comfort, encouragement and, because there is no need to wear a protective clothing, a human touch.

Their presence is so soothing that such survivors are known as "lullaby singers". Ebola having been declared a global health emergency last week, nearly a year after its outbreak, they may well be the key to overcoming the disease.

Mwamini Masiki volunteered to become a lullaby singer in January after winning a grueling one-month battle against the virus that killed her young nephew.

Last week, she began to look after an unidentified little boy, delivered to one of the biosafety units at the Ebola treatment center in Beni, a town in North-Eastern Province. Kivu, in eastern Congo, which has recorded 321 deaths since the outbreak of last summer.

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