What Ebola has done is to kick us out
of our complacency. Before the virus, we were convinced that everything was A
OK, sequestered as we were in our private worlds, heads clamped between
earphones, faculties numbed by streams of mood music.
Then Ebola
struck, first, as an unremarked event in a remote forest village in the Guinea forest.
Then, gathering pace, it swept through the countryside, making its way across
borders to towns and, finally, laying capital cities to waste. It was only then that its urgency grabbed us
by the shirt fronts, so to speak, forcing us to admit, with reluctance,
dissimulations and sometimes outright lies that we had a problem. The question
as to who or what caused the outbreak was one that was going to run its own
bizarre course.
For
the time being though, the issue was how to interrupt the progress of a catastrophe
that was unfolding. In spite of all the misinformation, mostly from
non-credible quarters, clear thinking eventually took charge and assured us that
Ebola was not an untameable beast; that it was just another natural phenomenon that
could be tackled along two separate but related lines: One was how to manage
the sick and dying (and the dead, of course); and the the other, how to stop the
currently unaffected becoming infected.
Dealing
with these two issues required resources of people and material, neither of
which grows on trees. And even if they did, a quantum of time would have been
required for a harvest. In those critical days, time there was not. But, after the slow start, mobilization along several fronts took place, with
thousands being deployed, together with matching supplies and equipment.
Initially, the deployment seemed to have had very little effect, creating the
impression that nothing was being done or that we were helpless. Doomsday
predictions of hundreds of thousands of cases became common. But gradually, the
multi-pronged response began to have an effect: Lack of knowledge of the
epidemiology of the disease among the at-risk public was made good and
facilities for management of affected patients sprung up at critical sites, so
that by the end of the twelfth month in the epidemic’s course, it looked as if
the beast that had sprung out of the undergrowth was about to be tamed.
In
countries where basic social services were already in an abominable state, the
challenge was where and how to find the funds for a rapid and effective mobilization.
But, in due course, the necessary money was pledged and even delivered. Now,
several months down the line, there is even talk that there is so much money,
that more than half of it has not been used (donations)
Where did all
the money come from? Well, the bulk came from the governments of rich countries
and foundations that were unable to stand by and watch whole nations and their
peoples go down the tube.
But some of the
money also came from individuals who normally, for various reasons, don’t care
about contributing to public issues, serious or otherwise. In this instance,
however, we too, dug deep. And well we should have because, although we don’t
know or feel it, we are evidently among the privileged few. That is, among the
one-percent of the world’s population who own half the planet’s wealth
according to the charity, Oxfam. Consider that! Only 70 million people in the
world own half of it (Inequality).
As usual, it is
difficult to know how such figures are arrived at and whether to rely on them
or not. But the assertion is being repeated all over the place, so one must
suppose that it is true. If so, is it harmful? You bet it is. But how do we
change things? I suppose we must turn again to powerful governments in the countries
where the really rich live. They are the ones who control the world’s fortunes.
Trouble is, these people keep their money in off-shore banks, beyond the reach
of the tax man, evidently with the connivance of their political leaders. And unless
and until this corrosive axis is uncoupled, the gap between the rich and
ordinary folk will remain and almost certainly widen.
The real victims
in this alliance though, are people in poor countries, whose governments might believe
that they too, have been granted licence to deal dirty.
New and emerging
diseases meanwhile watch with delight and bide their time.
