Baby Joy For Ebola Survivor Who Lost Family

Sierra Leone's first Ebola survivor, who lost 21 members of her family to the disease, has given birth to a baby boy.

Victoria Yillia delivered her child just a few minutes' walk from the ward where just last year she had hovered between life and death.

In the hours after the birth, doctors gave the baby formula milk and told Victoria not to nurse her baby until they ran tests to be sure there were no traces of the virus in her breast milk.

Very few mothers who have survived Ebola have been able to have children, doctors say, with many giving birth to stillborn children.

But after her baby was given the all clear, 20-year-old Victoria broke down as she and her husband Anthony discussed names and the youngster nestled in a blanket.

She said: "Because I lost all my relatives, God has blessed me and I can start a new family. With this baby, all I have lost has come back to me."

Victoria said she met Anthony in the village of Koindu, in Sierra Leone's eastern-most tip, when she was just 16 and he was volunteering with ambitions to become a teacher.

After they married, he went to Kenema to complete his university studies while she stayed behind in her village.

Soon she was expecting, but went to hospital after suffering complications during her first weeks of pregnancy.

She had no way of knowing that a nurse who treated her had been in Guinea - and brought the deadly Ebola virus across the border.

She lost her first baby in May 2014 as she was nearly three-months pregnant and was sent to see specialists.

Doctors worked out she had suffered more than a miscarriage - she was suffering from the virus that had previously wreaked havoc across Africa.

Meanwhile, other family members began falling sick in her village.

Anthony said: "We were at the hospital when we heard that her sister's baby boy was dead. A few minutes later they called to say that her mother was sick and two days later she died."

Soon, Victoria's father, her grandmother and her three older sisters all died as well.

Anthony didn't tell his wife that her whole family had been wiped out for several weeks to allow her to regain strength as she recovered.

"After we told her she cried and cried for weeks and days," he said.

After she left hospital, she went to live with her mother in law, who had also survived, and a three-year-old relative on her husband's side who had lost her parents and her siblings to the disease.

All were victims of a sickness that has killed nearly 4,000 people in Sierra Leone as well as nearly 5,000 in Liberia and over 2,500 in Guinea.

Victoria said that she was shocked when she found out she was pregnant again.

Doctors had said there was no way of knowing if she would be able to carry a child to term after having Ebola.

For as yet unknown reasons, other survivors have suffered miscarriages or had stillborn babies, Kenema hospital nurse matron Elizabeth Kamara said.

In the end, Victoria gave birth to a healthy 6lb, 3oz (2.8 kg) child, with no complications.

She has given hope to hundreds of mothers who were among the few to survive a disease that killed up to two out of three of those who caught it.

Victoria's survival will now be celebrated nationally: She has met the president and the day of her release, 8 June, is now National Survivors Day.

Last Thursday, she left the hospital and the following Sunday morning, despite having tried to put it off because of her sadness, she changed into her best clothes to attend a blessing service at her church.

The child was passed around by the women of the church before he was named by the pastor "Sunday Boy".

The couple, however, have decided to call him Barnabas - a Biblical name that often translates as the son of encouragement or consolation.

Anthony said: "He will be the foundation of our family, and a source of comfort to his mother. We pray that he will become a success in life."

He said although they have lost almost all other members of the family, they have a source of hope for the future.

"We are here," he said.