When I was in Grade 11, my biology teacher’s unit on diseases included a screening of Outbreak.
Outbreak is a film depicting a worst-case scenario spread of a disease called “Motaba” which for all intents and purposes is a cinematic envisioning of the Ebola virus.
The movie alone was jarring enough to my 17-year old sensibilities. What made it all the more disturbing was the fact that it depicted a real-life disease that can basically melt a person from the inside out.
In a response to overcrowding in treatment centers, prolific spread of the disease, and no improvements in sight, the Obama administration has decided to send 300 troops to build 17 new treatment centers in Africa.
The United States is often criticized for its aggressive and often invasive foreign policy, but considering how out of control the situation is for the local governments, this is an example of when it’s okay to take the bull by the horns. I completely support what they are doing.
Something has to be done. In addition to the 5,300 and counting in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, Nigeria, and Senegal, many of the aid workers from around the world who have risked their skins to battle the disease’s spread have been repatriated, carrying it themselves. Hospitals have already completely filled up in said countries, and there is no end in sight.
The World Health Organization themselves are on the fence about declaring the disease’s spread a global emergency. Obviously if the involved countries, Médecins Sans Frontičres, and the other patchwork of aid organizations can’t stay the spread of this abysmal sickness, something much larger must be done.
The only things more of a threat than the disease itself and the way it literally pulverizes its victims’ immune systems, are the forces that are propelling it. These forces are the familiar, hysterical wailing voices of fear and superstition.
Vectors that perpetuate the spread include the superstitious reliance much of the countries’ populations have on faith healers, and the dogged distrust of western medicine and the treatment it entails.
Government distrust and distrust of the western world is in no short supply in West Africa. Even as huge swaths of people die from the disease, there is an undeniable sentiment of “Who the hell do these people think they are?” among the locals, as aid organizations rush into the country, often unwelcome.
Many of the citizens in the afflicted areas believe that quarantine stations are part of a government plot. As goofy as that sounds, one should remember that in the case of Liberia, the citizens are still reeling from a 17-year civil war.
It goes without saying that because of such paranoia, there have been countless people breaking out of quarantine, spreading the disease. Eight aid workers were murdered the other day in another doubtless effect of the same paranoia.
Outbreaks in the past have brutal but brief. The many recent behaviours and circumstances came together like a perfect storm of bad decisions and misinformation.
It’s time for something drastic to be done. Like it or not, the United States has the money and the resources to step up. There is no reason that a virus which until now, has been easy to contain and stop, should become a global pandemic.
