UNC physician assistant plans to treat Ebola in Liberia

As the Ebola virus rages through West Africa, threatening to become a global epidemic, John Strader, a physician assistant in the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, is making plans to go to the heart of the outbreak.

Strader, who initially planned to retire in Malawi and work with HIV and AIDS patients through UNC Project-Malawi, said divine intervention steered him towards Liberia.

“I woke up about two o’clock in the morning and something was just pressing on my heart,” Strader said.

“Something just kept saying, ‘You’re not going to East Africa; you’re going to West Africa.’ At five o’clock in the morning, my mother, who’s 84 years old, was woken up and called me and asked me what was going on. I said, ‘Mom, I’m not going to East Africa anymore. I’m going to West Africa.’”

Strader said he would feel wrong flying over West Africa to get to East Africa because of the people in need of medical aid in territories affected by the Ebola outbreak.

Strader spoke about the connection between North Carolina and Liberia. After the infamous “Lost Colony,” Roanoke Island became a refuge for runaway slaves called the Freedmen’s Colony. Strader said an African Methodist Episcopal minister took people from Roanoke Island to Liberia in 1872 to establish the first African Methodist Episcopal church.

“If the Ebola virus took root over there, Liberia could be the third lost colony,” Strader said. “Me going over there is just one person, but it’s personal to the people of North Carolina.”

Strader has worked at Lineberger for 10 years. A cancer survivor himself, Strader cared for UNC women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell during her bout with cancer.

“It’s hard to even describe John because he’s one of a kind,” Hatchell said. “He’s a sincerely kind, loving, gentle human. He gives patients peace.”

Strader will work with local churches and mosques to reach out to the community rather than work in the medical clinics. He said if people can learn to provide supportive care without risking infection, rural communities could work to contain the virus.

“Before the people will really embrace you and let you treat them, they have to learn to trust you,” said Jill Humphries, a nurse who worked with Strader at Lineberger. “John is so good at that, so those people will embrace him quickly.”

Strader worked in end-of-life care and is deeply religious, which he said has given him the courage to aid others who are near death and the comfort to put his own life on the line.

“When I told my mother on the phone that night, I heard her take this big sigh,” Strader said. “And I said, ‘Now you always told me — if you’re worrying, you’re not trusting; if you’re not trusting, you don’t have faith; if you don’t have faith, you have nothing.’”

Strader’s last day at Lineberger is Oct. 31, a few weeks after his 61st birthday. He is still working out the logistics of his trip, but he plans to leave for Liberia by the end of this year.

He said if he were to contract the Ebola virus in Liberia, he would wait it out there rather than coming home.

“It’s only a veil through to the other side,” he said.

During the next two months, Strader will hand out miniature globe bouncy balls to remind people how small the world is.

“The world is such a very small place. You’d like to know life will never end, but it’s like a book. You will have a final chapter.”

university@dailytarheel.com