Eating the Ebola Cake and Having It

Last week I wrote that  the Ebola epidemic was running out of control because of ignorance and low education levels in the affected areas. I also thought that some in social media out there, for unknown reasons, were deliberately fanning flames of confusion.

Six centuries ago, the Black Death descended on Europe and took lives on an industrial scale, around 60 million, if we are to believe those 14^th century stats. We were not there, so we can't really tell but, in any case, our connection with that holocaust is not as immediate as with the current Ebola outbreak. Also, we can’t know the people who were dying then but now, with only a few degrees separating each one of us, we are every bit as terrified as 14^th century Europeans must have been when they had to deal with the plague.  Fourteenth century Europe knew little about the cause of plague. All they knew was that it led to death on a massive scale and that there was nothing they could do to stop people dying horribly. Six centuries on, in spite of the spread of education to most parts of the globe, there are still some stubborn pockets of ignorance that are a block to understanding how an infection like Ebola arises and is transmitted. The idea that Ebola is caused by a virus is beyond the imagination of the ordinary man or woman living in his or her village. But that is something that we can make good. We can teach and inform the merely ignorant. This is why it is worrying that some of those who can do not engage in the required teaching.

Even more troublesome are those who misuse their education and position to deliberately misinform, scare and confuse. They begin by blaming governments for not “sealing” the borders shared by the three countries first affected by the epidemic, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. As if it was that easy: A quick look at maps of the area reveals the forested nature of the entire region. People living in that environment move about without the slightest regard to the lines drawn by 19^th century

Forest Canopy

colonial map makers. Shutting down official border crossing points would not contribute much. The border markings are not only irrelevant, they lie within the  domain of the witch doctor whose knowledge of Ebola is almost certainly no more sophisticated than that of the ordinary person's. And this is the environment in which the virus makes its transition from its natural host to humans.   

And, talking about the origin of Ebola, the gossip-spinners have come up with the extraordinary notion that the epidemic is part of a sinister plot engineered by US scientists experimenting with biological warfare agents on poor Sierra Leonean villagers. And all this, it seems, because, at Kenema, the centre of the fight against the Ebola, there has been, for years, a hospital treating patients with Lassa fever, another highly infectious hemorrhagic viral disease for which there is also no known cure. That hospital is there because Lassa fever is endemic in the area and is, therefore, an excellent place for learning how to diagnose, treat and control it. I have met the director of the programme, Dr Robert Garry. He speaks openly about what he and his team from Tulane University are doing at Kenema. He was also open about the source of funding for the project, namely, the US government. I could detect no trace of deviousness in what he said he was doing, but then, I’m no Edward Snowden.

And, interestingly, the voices that are claiming that biological warfare is being waged against defenceless villagers are the same ones that now clamour for using “secret serums” to treat Africans suffering and dying from Ebola. They  become even more strident when they demand to know why is it that only American Ebola victims get the serum treatment when hundreds of Africans dying across four countries are denied it. But those voices must know it is not as simple as that. Trying out untested treatments on the poor and powerless is an ethical minefield that few would gaily venture into. The same voices remind us of horror stories, such as Tuskegee, as reasons why we should not go there. It seems they want to have their cake and eat it.

So, in spite of it all, I can detect the traces of common sense running beneath all the bluster. The trick, therefore is, how we go about squaring this particular circle. Very carefully, I would imagine

Tell Fren Tru