A late shift yesterday for my final first-hand experience in the red zone before we open Moyamba. The white Ebola ward tents are baked by the mid-afternoon African sun and I manage only 45 minutes in the protective equipment, surfacing for air in the green zone like a diver out of oxygen.

There is a danger of a machismo when it comes to the time spent in the red zone. Recently two international health workers were sent home for breaching rules and spending two hours in PPE - a dangerous and unnecessary amount of time.

We see two new admissions transferred by ambulance from Moyamba, a three-hour drive away. In a week’s time we will have beds ready to avoid this long and uncomfortable dislocation.

The whole Ebola hospital, with its security fencing and white tents resembles a concentration camp, and the new patient’s first contact with us must reinforce that sense of prison visiting. This is a high-security prison for germs with concentric fortifications of chlorine baths and sprays to ensure not a single germ enters or leaves.

From a safe distance we take a picture of the transfer notes that the ambulance driver holds up to his window using a mobile phone, then transcribe them to our own records before a short clinical history.

The initial triage involves an interview conducted across two fences, two meters apart. Two nurses then enter in full PPE to guide them through our one-way Ebola maze to the wards.

Our hygiene team springs into action with sprayers to decontaminate the back of the ambulance, while the driver sits in his enclosed cabin looking very nervous about his latest fare. There is a well-rehearsed ritual for this decontamination procedure, which we will have to practice next week.

We don PPE and follow the patient in. On the ward we carry out a cursory examination and explain the importance of eating and drinking. A standard recipe of antimalarials, antibiotics, analgesia, multivitamins, zinc and anthelminthics are prescribed to everyone. Then it’s on to complete urgent tasks, making the most of our dive into the red zone. IV medications for two severely unwell girls. More fluids for patients managing to drink. A check on a young boy who had been convulsing.

I pass by Patricia, the five-year-old girl who I had seen the day before to see how she is doing. She is dead.

Four hygienists in their PPE uniforms spray her body and her death bed, then carefully package and seal her in a white plastic bag, covering everything in a mist of chlorine. Her small, frail body packaged like a postal delivery.

Death, a child’s death in particular, is an event that you never become desensitised to, whatever your experience, and the excitement of my first front-line experience evaporates in an instant.

Her sealed corpse will be exchanged in another complicated decontamination dance to the safe burial team outside the Ebola centre before being dropped in an unmarked grave.

All her possessions will be burnt. In a few hours no trace of her short life will be remain.

MORE BLOG POSTS FROM PROFESSOR JOHN WRIGHT