In the eye of the outbreak

Yao's team worked at the World Health Organization's Sub-regional Ebola Outbreak Coordination Center, which is based in Conakry, Photos provided to China Daily

Despite her daughter's concerns, Beijing doctor Yao Gaiqi traveled to West Africa to help local health workers contain the spread of Ebola.

On the afternoon of Aug 11, Yao Gaiqi received a phone call from her bosses at Peking University Third Hospital, asking her to prepare to go to West Africa. Her mission? To help fight the Ebola outbreak.

"I'm not a passionate traveler, and West Africa had seemed very far away from my life," says Yao, 50, director of the hospital's intensive care unit. "I would be lying if I said I was not afraid. But it is my job to treat patients, and I must go if I'm selected."

As a specialist at the top general hospital in China, Yao had led a number of response teams to treat victims of earthquakes and terrorist attacks. But this was a different kind of assignment.

Yao agreed to go and told her teenage daughter that she was traveling to Birmingham in the United Kingdom for training, fearing the girl would worry too much about her safety if she told her the truth. "I could not imagine how she would react if I told her I was going to West Africa," Yao says.

On Sept 20, as many countries closed their borders with Guinea over fears that the Ebola outbreak would spread, Yao and two other doctors from China left for Conakry, capital of Guinea. China began sending relief materials and medical experts to West Africa after the deadly outbreak began in March.

The group received a warm welcome from the Chinese embassy to Guinea and China-Guinea Friendship Hospital, which was built by China. They joined a 10-member medical team from Beijing Friendship Hospital that had been sent in August to help prevent diseases from spreading.