Feature: Sierra Leone girl, Chinese nurse find friendly ties in Ebola fight

"I will never forget that little girl named Yayuma," said Huang Shun, a head nurse from the Chinese medical team stationed at Sierra Leone-China Friendship Hospital, about 30 kilometers away from the capital Freetown.

The destiny tied Huang and Yayuma together, when the nurse entered the Ebola Observation Center in the hospital at the end of last November and met the nine-year-old girl who had lost her mother and was suffering from the Ebola Virus Disease.

"The first sight at her made me heartbroken," Huang recalled that the girl was confirmed with Ebola virus and lied in the bed for almost ten days, during which she nearly died with severe fever and frequent emesis or diarrhea.

However, a miracle happened when the little Sierra Leoean girl recovered day by day as the fever came to an end and she was able to go to the toilet by herself on November 10. The whole medical team became excited and happy.

"Every team member tried his or her best to express the concern for the little girl. They brought chocolates, biscuits and toys to the patient's room," Huang told Xinhua.

Yayuma was sent to a help center set up by the United Nations in Freetown after she fully recovered. Knowing this, Huang visited there in her spare time but met with disappointment after she was told that Yayuma was picked up by her uncle from the eastern part of the country and then returned to the countryside.

Huang remembered the moment when she saw on the wall of the help center Yayuma's picture, in which the little girl seemed to have grown higher and stronger, with a pair of glasses and a blooming smile on her face.

A new year has come in January with a good news that the Chinese medical team managed to get in touch with Yayuma's uncle, who then promised to bring the little girl back to Freetown. On the night of Jan. 9 the team members held a party at their residence to celebrate the new life of Yayuma.

"I felt like I would never let her go when we met again," said Huang, who bought snacks, toys and new clothes with her colleagues bought from a supermarket in Freetown for Yayuma. The smart girl received a warm welcome and mastered writing "China" in Chinese characters during her short stay with the medical experts.

"We are just like a family," said Huang. "There will be another home for Yayuma in China forever. I'm leaving now, and I wish her a happy future. She was able to beat Ebola, (and ) I think there's nothing she can't do." Endi