By Ezekiel Nabieu
We shall not tire. We shall continue the relentless assault on Ebola. We shall not stop until we wish Ebola good riddance. Never in human history has an endemic disease caused on estrangement of friends and families rather than the much-needed love that can elicit a placebo effect. What disease is this? Where has it been lurking in human history only to surface in 1976? Are there more of these kinds of diseases in the bag? Only God knows.
It was in like manner that HIV/AIDS awoke from its somnolence in the past couple of decades.
Yet another golden opportunity is being lost by the superfluous ABC Secretariat that has demonstrated its irrelevance by affiliating with the Anti-Corruption Commission. The Secretariat is most conspicuously absent where they are most blended. One would never hear about the garrulous duo until the scourge goes away.
Meanwhile they are busy training and running workshops like fiddling while Sierra Leone burns. They would not find out what is responsible for the mind-set of a citizenry that has no confidence in the assurances of their government.
What is in vogue is the falsehood that as soon as you report to hospital or a health centre for treatment of a fever or vomiting or diarrhoea you are tagged with Ebola and admitted among the victims. Horrendous! The stories are doing the rounds fast that patients have been wrongly diagnosed and have needlessly died as a result.
Exceptionally there could be a wrong diagnosis as it happens with every other disease but it should not be thought that every other diagnosis would be the wrong one. Now is the time for Dr. & Ms. of the ABC to deliver some comprehensive lecturers to the public on a daily basis. Lectures should not be confirmed to selected schools for the next generation.
There is a threat for the present generation to almost be wiped out by Ebola.
There have been suggestions not so well thought out for government to provide viewing centres where the public can congregate to know more about Ebola. This suggestion runs counter to the fact that where there are crowds people would unwittingly shake hands and/or hug one another thereby spreading the disease. It should be nipped in the bud. There are several ways to kill a cat but this is one way to kill a person.
In view of the fact that we are communicating with a mainly stiff-necked and illiterate people it is necessary to rub it in. Which is why I have no alternative but to reiterate some of the facts about Ebola.
Human-to-human transmission is only achieved by physical contact with a person who is acutely or gravely ill from the Ebola virus or their body fluids, including vomit, faeces, urine, breast milk, semen and sweat. (Be careful on public transport!).
A person can incubate the virus without symptoms for 2-21 days, the average being 5-8 days before becoming ill. You cannot contract Ebola by handling money, buying bread or swimming in a pool.
The question of avoiding bush meat is not going to be easily implementable. Where is the alternative for people living in the interior far away from rivers or streams? Let us keep hoping that the Ebola-infected animals in the bush would die out before their holiday period is over.
Sensitisation is the only way in which believers and non-believers alike can conform to measures of curbing the diseases and this could only be achieved through language.
It is a pity that our lingua franca is being bastardised to such an extent as to be unintelligible.
We are turning that blessing into a curse because almost everyone is trying to show his/her expertise in the Queen’s English.
Fancy the ongoing public notice on the escaped Ebola patient that “anybody wae go LOCATE arm" instead of "FEN (find) am….”
That key word to a mainly literate populace destroys the message. It had rather be delivered in English for listeners who know English to translate to their compatriots. The fact is that we are underrating Krio and this is proving to be our undoing.
Ebola is not political. It afflicts government and opposition alike, regardless.
Tougher measures are needed by government if Ebola is to be contained in the shortest possible time. Victims with confirmed cases of the disease had been escaping from the Kenema hospital without any reaction by government to scupper the trend. The fire-fighting should cease forthwith. If OSD of the Sierra Leone Police can be posted to private banks and other institutions why not get them posted at the few hospitals where suspected Ebola patients are admitted to prevent any storming as happened in Freetown recently.
Even though one or two victims have turned themselves in there is still a grave danger of the spread of the disease by the missing escapees. We wait to hear what will happen after 21 days.
It’s awesome. It’s no use saying that hospitals and health centres are not prisons. Sometimes it is opposite to make exceptions to the rule in tune with the exigencies of the hour. These are not normal times.
If Ebola is not eliminated till the dry season some people are going to be ineluctably infected by profuse sweating of fellow travellers in public transport. This raises the question of congestion in vehicles and its prevention by the police. The prospect here is more frightening than mere hand-shaking which is so mechanical as not to be easily avoidable.
Back to the interview with the Minister of Health she is quoted as having said “so even as we talk about deaths there is something to celebrate". According to the Oxford dictionary CELEBRATE means mark or honour with festivities. I am at my wits end to fathom what the minister meant. It was like trivialising such a portentous issue. The choice of words is a choice of arms. Was she not misusing the word CELEBRATE? I wish she had said it was CONSCIOUS time instead of a time for festivities in the midst of deaths.
Sadly Ebola is the latest to join the wobbly train of FASTEST GROWING. It is preceded by fastest growing economy, fastest growing hunger and fastest growing sycophancy, etc. The caveat here SPEED KILLS.
According to biblical prophecy Ebola would fall into the fulfilment of prophecy in Matthew 24:7. It is written “For nation shall rise against nation, and Kingdom against Kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places.”
Have we not in recent times had tsunamis worse than earthquake, mad cow disease and HIV/AIDs before this latest scourge? According to this prediction other more deadly diseases may be in waiting.
(C) Politico 01/08/14
