Containing Ebola

It is summer. The World Cup is over and there isn’t much happening. So I trawl Google to see what’s new on Sierra Leone. It turns out to be a pretty depressing search.  Ebola is everywhere. What makes it worse is that the story drags with it an astonishing amount of nonsense.

Ebola virus. Image courtesy of CDC

Ebola is an infectious disease caused by a virus. You get it only by catching it from someone or something already infected or contaminated. Simple enough, you would think. But it is worth repeating: “If you are exposed to the virus, you get the disease.” Once that is understood, control becomes simple.

But in Sierra Leone, the disease is apparently running out of control. Just because, it seems, of refusal to acknowledge the connection between the two: infectious agent (virus), and the disease, (Ebola). That link between agent and disease is being swept aside, in an almost offhand way, by belief in notions such as visitations from the deity or in humours unleashed by evil spirits. Either way, prayer, lots of it, becomes the recommended therapy. For some, at least. Inevitably, that creates fertile ground for bizarre behaviours, helped along by characters haunting social media.

Managing the Ebola crisis rests on the shoulders of a few sober-minded individuals in the battle of their lives.  Even though there is a lot of sensible information out there for anyone literate enough, the distractions are many. But for the uneducated, the challenges are even more daunting. Some alternatives exist, though. One of these is radio. Radio has a wide reach, even in Sierra Leone. It is a fantastic medium for transmitting information to both the literate and the illiterate. As long as the message is clear and simple. Take the efforts of the United States Centres for Disease Control for example. They have prepared Ebola information material in 10 major Sierra Leone languages. I hope the CDC will not mind my providing links to their excellent resource here:

• Fullar Listen  |         Download 
• Kissi Listen  |          Download 
• Kono Listen  |         Download 
• Krio Listen  |           Download 
• Limba Listen  |        Download 

• Loko Listen  |          Download 
• Madingo Listen  |    Download 
• Mende Listen  |       Download 
• Susu Listen  |           Download 
• Themne Listen  |      Download 

These should counter most of all the crazy and silly stuff about the disease.

         Education is key to coping with life’s challenges and has a major role in preventing these awful plagues descending on us with such depressing regularity. School instruction in basic science should, in general, be enough to enable understanding of how infections come about and what to do when they threaten.

It may be that we have missed the education boat for this present outbreak. But one may well ask, what happens next time round?

There just shouldn’t be a next time.

Tell Fren Tru

PS. Just heard that Dr Sheik Umar Khan, the lead doctor in the fight against the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has been taken ill with the disease.