Imagine if our government and the other governments of the major developed countries had paid attention to Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when they were running around with their heads on fire regarding the ebola outbreaks in West Africa back in July, instead of those same governments sitting on their hands pretending nothing important was happening. Maybe we (we being the USA and our Europeans friends) could have prevented this catastrophe from happening:
Whatever its causes, it is evident now that the rapid and accelerating spread of Ebola – the virus is infecting five additional people every hour in Sierra Leone and a similar number in Liberia – is the avoidable result of a lack of hospital beds, isolation wards and basic facilities. It is the result, also, of too few doctors and nurses, of underprotected health workers who are themselves falling ill in large numbers, of traditional healing and burial practices, of generally underfunded healthcare systems, of corrupt misappropriation of foreign aid earmarked for healthcare and, crucially, of the lack of a vaccine in the face of a mutating virus. Of the 20,000 new cases predicted by the end of November, 70% on current trends will result in death. By the end of January, the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta warns, there could be 1.4m new cases.
Well, they weren’t Americans so the public, and few people in a position to do something important to stop the spread of this killer virus gave much of a damn until cases started popping up here within the “homeland.” And still the world’s response to the crisis is far less than needed. The US has barely begun to intervene in this humanitarian crisis, while Europe stays mostly on the sidelines.
The European Commission makes all the right noises, but its financial contribution has been paltry. One of its main concerns appears to be how to airlift EU nationals in the affected countries.
Here’s the truth of the matter, stated better than I can:
The scary truth of the Ebola pandemic is that, starting with the WHO last March, the world’s leading governments and institutions were, for the most part, caught napping. They thought (as did much of the western media) that this outbreak was another grisly but isolated act in Africa’s ongoing human tragedy. They thought it would not affect us.
“They” were wrong. Everything that happens in this globalized world of ours affects us. Ignorance, incompetence, sheer stupidity, bigotry – take your pick for the reasons no major political figures around the world, much less their governments, took the cries for help from the World Health Organization and MSF seriously. One more example (as if the failure to take significant action on climate change weren’t enough) that the wealthy nations of the world are led by fools or worse, people who could care less when others die unless it moves the numbers in some poll in their favor.