AFTER 30 years as a frontline paramedic former Ludlow man Mark Smith thought himself beyond tears.

Then he saw three teenage sisters who survived the ravages of Ebola welcomed back into a community that thought them lost to the “Red Zone”.

Mark’s eyes misted faster than condensation could cloud his protective goggles.

Several weeks on from trying to hold back tears in Sierra Leone, the 57-year-old who worked at Tenbury Hospital and once lived in Burford still struggles to express exactly what the moment meant.

“The pure joy of this... tears of pure joy...”

Words trail off to lead Mark back inside the “Welcome Tent” at Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre, and a spontaneous explosion of clapping, dancing and colour that the three sisters stepped into, having washed stigma away in the “Happy Shower” to get on with their lives as Ebola survivors.

“I have no defence against something like that,” says Mark. “And I don’t want one.”

In the Red Zone though, the mask could never slip – literally.

There, millimetres made the difference between heading home to quarantine or your own place in a critical care unit.

So Mark, a senior paramedic with West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS), spent much of his six-week secondment to Kerry Town treatment centre – run by Save The Children – either inside a biohazard suit or showing others how to get into one.

In January, The Advertiser reported Mark as answering a call from the NHS for UK volunteers to boost the fight against Ebola.

Then, Mark spoke of his part in that fight as being “ personal” when the disease denied the human touch to the end.

Working directly with desperate Ebola patients in the Red Zone, contact came as application of basic nursing care.

Equally basic were the 20-25 minutes taken to “suit -up” so thoroughly that every seam of that heat-sealed suit had to be checked for the tiniest gap that meant its immediate rejection.

In the zone, a shift was measured out in sweat that, says Mark, didn’t ooze but seemed to pour inside your suit and so literally you could see it filling both layers of your gloves.

Even away from the zone, Ebola was an ever-present risk. In Kerry Town, everybody knew somebody with Ebola but, Mark added, the smiles were just as infectious and you had to return them.

Over Mark’s secondment, survival rates were around 60% and, as the reception in the Welcome Tent showed, the stigma attached to survivors perceived as carriers is slowly dissipating.

With 21 days of quarantine up, Mark is back on blue light response as he has done for 30 years

But on those rare quieter moments during a shift he’ll catch himself wondering whether Kerry Town really happened.

Just to make sure of the difference made, he’d “go back like a shot.”

“It’s a unique experience and an honour and a privilege to serve in such an environment,” he said.