Ebola: A tale of racism, inequality and graft

What you need to know:

  • Remember the bird flu that threatened millions and BSE or mad cow disease that was predicted to cause a plague and ended up killing only 28. After that we had SARS and now it is Ebola.
  • Closing borders is closing hearts and minds. Reaching out generously will ultimately benefit the donor country as much as the recipient.

Health scares make big news and the global media houses know that.

Remember the bird flu that threatened millions and BSE or mad cow disease that was predicted to cause a plague and ended up killing only 28. After that we had SARS and now it is Ebola.

When reporting new health threats, headline writers go into overdrive with scare-mongering tactics and lose all sense of proportion and journalism etiquette. In the process they display profound ignorance and deep prejudice as Africa is once again pictured as the dark continent of helpless and hopeless victims.

The global TV channels have no remorse or shame at considering Africa as a country and forget the hurt they cause millions of viewers on this continent. Ebola has not only revealed the great inequalities and prejudices that dominate our planet, it has also shown that the World Health Organisation (WHO) is the latest example of a UN body that is incompetent, bureaucratic and unable to meet its mandate.

Six months ago, Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) warned of the Ebola crisis but WHO played it down, never sought adequate funding and failed to get boots on the ground.

They clearly had not learned any lesson when they failed Haiti in the Cholera epidemic that killed 9,000 in 2010. Even today MSF provide 70 per cent of the medical personnel on the ground and even Cuba has sent 460 medical workers to West Africa, an amazing achievement from a country of only 11 million and with a GDP of a mere $6,000.

When Ebola was first recorded in Texas, panic and hysteria spread like a wild fire that was fed by the media houses, in particular CNN.

What they failed to acknowledge was that the West was more concerned with stemming the epidemic at their own borders than stalling it in West Africa. Even then the outrage was disproportionate if we look at the numbers dying each year in USA through gun culture and violence while few complain.

Admittedly, the US have now pledged $400 million but as World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the international community ‘‘failed miserably’’ by coming up with the goods eleven months late with at least 5,000 now dead in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But is that any surprise when the latter has a mere 327 hospital beds and Liberia only 61 doctors?

Those two countries are also ranked among the most corrupt on the planet, so the Ebola challenge confirms the cost of poor governance and kleptocracy.

Ebola, however, is a challenge to the global family and a warning that it is in everyone’s mutual interests to cooperate to resolve the imminent crisis.

Closing borders is closing hearts and minds. Reaching out generously will ultimately benefit the donor country as much as the recipient.

We are all enjoined at the hip to the human project and issues of race, inequality, ignorance, prejudice and corruption are not only morally wrong but seriously retard any global effort at alleviating the crisis.

It may seem cheap and simplistic, but we are all journeying together and Ebola reminds us how far we have to travel.