The Ebola outbreak that hit West Africa in spring has caused more panic and media hype than any other disease in decades. It has even been labelled the plague of the 21st century. So what’s behind this terrifying label?
Over 7,000 deaths, nearly 20,000 infected and no cure. Seems like the only thing that the international community has achieved since the launch of the campaign on battling the Ebola virus has been mass hysteria. Many people still have a rather vague idea of how the virus actually spreads and what the symptoms are. Governments whip up scaremongering by shutting down schools and airports, sealing off entire districts and closing the borders with the affected countries. In Sierra Leone, where half of its population of 6 million was quarantined, authorities even banned public Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, deploying soldiers throughout the festive period to force people from the streets back indoors. However, neither of the above mentioned measures will make a difference until significant changes take place in the West African healthcare system, says Roberto Ravera, Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the Hospital of Sanremo and Hospital of Imperia in Italy.
“The problem in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea is that they don’t have doctors, nurses and psychologists able to work in these conditions. For example, in the entire country of Sierra Leone there is not one psychologist. And to coordinate the prevention project we need a specialist in mental health, because you have to understand the local culture, their anthropology and religious beliefs. We cannot close all the borders, because the problem is in Africa. I ask the governments – please, invest money in West Africa, otherwise it will be impossible to control the disease and to control the infection”.
The situation abroad was not much better. In the US, nurses who treated Ebola patients from Africa were forced on a three-week quarantine, which basically turned into home detention. Temperature screenings were introduced in nearly all international airports with more and more Western politicians insisted that flights from the Ebola-stricken countries should be banned altogether. In Spain, a dog was euthanized without the permission of its owner who returned from the hospital after recovering from Ebola. Such a disproportionate and ill-advised response is driven by panic, not by the familiarity with medical nuances, says Dr. John Palisano, Professor of Biology at Sewanee: The University of the South.
"It is difficult to quarantine people, let alone a country. The past example, when we had a person in America who had a resistant TB, he was told not to travel and he immediately got on an airplane, because he had a business meeting and travelled all over the country to Europe. So, quarantine is difficult to establish. And in this day and age of global communication and travel I think it is unrealistic at this stage".
More proof that the policy of isolationism is not effective is the fact that with millions of dollars having been allocated by the international donors to the fight against Ebola, the virus keeps spreading. What’s even worse — among those infected are also doctors and nurses. According to the World Health Organization, over 600 health workers have been infected with the deadly disease, including some 350 who were killed by the virus. To honor the huge input by these people, Time magazine named medical personnel treating Ebola patients as its Person of the Year. The virus itself was listed as the top public health challenge of 2014 by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
