By Umaru Fofana
Virtually everyone who travelled on the Brussels Airline flight from Freetown a few weeks ago noticed that it had onboard a passenger who could barely stand on her feet, unaided. Not because she was sick. Rather because she was clearly inebriated.
On the flight she threw up. As if to say airbags on planes – meant for anyone who feels some nausea – were of no use any longer so long the flight was coming from any of the Mano River Union countries, people in personal protective equipment, or PPE, were called to quarantine the plane once it landed in the European capital.
This is as much about precaution as it smacks of paranoia. I will stop short of using the R word even if some in the West see Africa as a country and West Africa as one of the districts therein. So much so that as far as they are concerned the entire region is sucked in the Ebola menace. And you cannot rule out ignorance – at least some of the time.
Whatever the reason, it is disheartening that all fevers are now Ebola-suspect so long they are shown by someone in or from this part of the world. All stomach pains now warrant isolation. All vomiting now triggers a dash away. It is called stereotyping. It leads to stigmatisation and ostracism.
Such is the crescendo it has reached that the Australian and Canadian governments decided to slam a visa ban – albeit temporarily – on all Sierra Leoneans living at home. Travellers from Sierra Leone, Guinea or Liberia who are otherwise hold permanent visas are allowed to enter Australia but they must be quarantined for 21 days prior to arrival, while those who have received non-permanent visas but have not travelled to Australia will have their visas cancelled.
And then in the next minute the Aussie premier was asking the world to help in the fight against Ebola in west Africa. It is double-speak, to put it mildly. How can the rest of the world do as told by Tony Abbott when he has not urged his own citizens to help in his local fight! How can his citizens when he has implied by his visa ban that all Sierra Leoneans have Ebola and therefore must not be allowed to travel to his country.
The other the Australian health minister said that in Africa tradition mandated the drinking of the bathwater of the dead. This is not only false but offensive. The tradition neither exists – if it does it is not widespread – nor is it an Africa-wide practice.
Ignorance enmeshed in idiocy beclouding reasoning. Ebola is about science and not allowing fear to eat up commonsense. Such is how much the latter is winning that a friend of mine who works for Channel 4 TV in the UK was told by the authorities of the school his son that he must not visit the place until after almost a month. Reason: they saw his reporting from Sierra Leone. I would not be surprised if the school authorities had even asked Alex's son to stop attending because he lives with his dad in the same house. Balderdash!
Alex was also disinvited by the organisers of a media awards ceremony I Luxemburg which he was supposed to co-chair. Reason: he's just returned from Sierra Leone.
A Sierra Leonean journalist, Amara Bangura, on scholarship in England struggled to get an apartment to rent because landlords cancelled their offer when they learned he was Sierra Leone.
These days when someone who’s visited any of the Ebola-hit countries falls sick or dies they are deemed to have been infected with the Ebola virus. It is good to be precautious, doubtless, but it is foolish to be paranoid in such situations to the extent of making science the casualty as is being the case here. Responding to or dealing with Ebola must not be kneejerk. Nor must it be ruled by phobia. It has to be scientific. And that science is what we need from those who have the wherewithal to help us and not to stigmatise us and scare us even more.
This brings me to the world assistance that has been coming in. They are not obliged to come and help us where our authorities have failed or not even tried at all. I agree. They are doing so out of humanitarian consideration, yes, but also to protect themselves, like President Obama argues, to tackle the disease from source otherwise there will be no safety for anyone in this global village we find ourselves in these days. But when that help comes in dribs and drabs and less for those it is aimed to help then it comes into question.
I have written and reported extensively about how I feel the British approach to the Ebola situation here is the way to go. Containing the virus by fishing out all those who have it and taking them into treatment centres; and putting under surveillance they came into contact with in the days leading up to and during their infection.
The overriding theme there is a place to take the sick to hence the warning not to touch anyone who is sick unless their ailment is confirmed to be no Ebola related. But that hope which the commissioning of the Kerry Town Ebola centre brought about is being dashed by the fact that less than 10 percent of the 80-bed facility is being put into use, three weeks since it was opened to patients. Worse still, patients are being turned away.
Two excuses have been advanced for this: it has to be a phased approach to taking in patients, and the patients must have been referred there so as not to open a flood gate.
The first point may hold water in that not all the beds can be expected to be filled right now thereby overwhelming the medical staff and compromising their safety. But to have gone for three weeks without ramping up to at least a quarter of the capacity of beds is a disservice and a waste of the British taxpayers’ money especially because many of the medics are housed in the luxury beach resort at Tokeh doing virtually nothing.
On the issue that they only take in patients referred to them, I absolutely understand with the point that it cannot be a floodgate. But the fact that Kerry Town has a triage and a laboratory makes it obvious that it was not set up to only deal with confirmed cases. So suspect cases not necessarily referred to them should be catered for. I was there on the day the doors were opened and patients came in there without having been referred. Or were they playing to the media – or press – gallery?
The world must wake up to the reality that if they dither in dealing with Ebola here like the government proved clueless in dealing with it, this could be worse than Armageddon – then CDC will be proved right albeit beyond the doomsday date of December 2014. And more than one million people will be infected. This time a lot more beyond Africa than the projection could have had in mind. And the Ebola virus would have proved brainier than we all are.
© Politico 27/11/14
