Posted on 01/02/2020 10:20:24 AM PST by SeekAndFind
With the world's first Ebola vaccine just approved in Europe, the world's biggest global health crisis doesn't have to be. But it's important that Americans understand that Ebola is not just an African problem. The virus still has the potential to bring devastation on a massive scale, unless we work together with communities within Africa to ensure that people don't just have access to the vaccine, but are educated about how to contain the spread of the disease.
There have been over 2,000 deaths since Ebola reemerged in the DRC this year. Rwanda closed its border with the DRC after cases of the virus were confirmed, but Ebola spreads quickly, and dangerously. By June, it had spread to Uganda.
Between 2014 and 2016, Ebola took 11,000 lives and infected 28,000 people in West Africa. The U.S. watched with bated breath as American doctor Kent Brantly, infected in Liberia in 2014, narrowly escaped death by being airlifted to a U.S. hospital.
Most aren’t so lucky. Ebola is a rare and highly infectious virus, with a variable death rate that averages around two-thirds but according to the WHO can be up to 90%. It leads to heavy internal bleeding and causes cells to explode throughout the body.
But Ebola is not just Africa’s problem. Although the virus has only emerged in Africa thus far, it is positioned to be the global health crisis of the next decade, and it has the potential to bring devastation on a massive scale.
As the most well-resourced country in the world, the United States has not only the ability but the imperative to extend aid to those suffering overseas. Compassion calls us to bring our expertise and resources to those exposed to Ebola in Africa, but it is also a matter of national and self-interest. This is not an “us vs. them” scenario. In today’s increasingly interconnected global society, the flow of people – and diseases – between countries is more commonplace than ever before.
The Ebola crisis is not dissimilar to the HIV/AIDs crisis in that education and safe health practices are key to stopping transmission of this deadly disease. Like HIV, Ebola is spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids. Informing families with basic information of how the disease is spread can prevent the spread of the disease among those who are often protect and care for one another.
Stopping the spread of Ebola also means confronting potentially dangerous cultural practices. Funeral and burial practices in many parts of Africa that involve touching the bodies of loved ones are exceptionally high-risk. These practices can include bathing in the rinse water from the washing of corpses. Guinea’s Ministry of Health, for example, reported in 2015 that 60 percent of its Ebola cases at that time were linked to unsafe burial and funeral practices.
In the 1990s, large swaths of Africa were being decimated by AIDs. There was treatment available, but the majority of the population didn’t trust the government or the NGOs distributing the drugs. Many were overlooking a critical resource: the church, which has ability to mobilize extraordinary numbers of people.
As World Relief engaged in working in local communities to combat this disease, we worked with churches to encourage discussion of sexual practices, break the stigma of HIV and distribute treatment. As with HIV/AIDS, maximizing the role of the church is the most effective way to stop the transmission of the Ebola virus.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, an average of 77% of Christians attend religious services weekly or more. In one of my earliest trips to the continent, I walked hut to hut with a pastor searching out the people most stricken by AIDs. We discovered who needed childcare while they went to get treatment, and who wasn’t even aware that drugs were available.
Local pastors have the ability to locate the most vulnerable in their communities in ways that governments and foreign NGOs do not. We must rely on their relationships and cultural understanding in order to combat major health crises.
Information campaigns need to make the public aware of the early symptoms of Ebola. Unlike HIV, Ebola cannot be transmitted until a person develops symptoms – meaning awareness of the virus’s flu-like symptoms can be key to preventing its spread. One of the best ways to provide this lifesaving education is to use church networks.
Pastors and faith leaders are also essential to convincing loved ones to conduct modified burial practices. They can leverage their authority to stop the spread of false information about the infection, which can lead to attacks on health workers and Ebola treatment centers. Additionally, they can insist that the handling of bodies be done by teams who are trained in safe burials.
Faith leaders can also direct those potentially affected by the virus to avoid traditional healers, who could be in danger of contracting the virus themselves, and seek out safe and effective medical care – which requires the use of face masks, gloves, gowns and disposable needles. After the Ebola outbreaks began in 2014, for example, rumors spread that hospitals were places of contagion and death, causing many to avoid seeking early and potentially lifesaving medical care. Local churches can take the lead in stopping rumors like these.
Encouraging as the news of the vaccine approval is, Ebola remains a significant threat. When we use our resources to empower local churches – which are willing to serve anyone regardless of their beliefs – large foreign interventions aren’t required to break stigma and spread practical health messages to those in vulnerable populations.
If we want to head off the world’s next big health crisis, we can’t turn a blind eye to what’s happening in the DRC. And strategically activating local faith communities must be a critical component of our response.
Quick.....we need to send more $$$ to Africa.
Again and again.
Let me get my tinfoil hat.... again.....
I’m not going to read the article, but if it says because it will come in through the southern border then I agree
In total, the CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season, 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died.
So how long have folks like Scott been trying to fix Africa? And in their frustration after over a hundred years of failure, they’re trying to move the whole population of 1.3 billion people to the United States and northwestern Europe.
Cultural beliefs and behavioural practices
High-risk behaviours in the three countries have been similar to what has been seen during previous Ebola outbreaks in equatorial Africa, with adherence to ancestral funeral and burial rites singled out as fuelling large explosions of new cases. Medical anthropologists have, however, noted that funeral and burial practices in West Africa are exceptionally high-risk.
Data available in August, as reported by Guinea’s Ministry of Health, indicated that 60% of cases in that country could be linked to traditional burial and funeral practices. In November, WHO staff in Sierra Leone estimated that 80% of cases in that country were linked to these practices.
In Liberia and Sierra Leone, where burial rites are reinforced by a number of secret societies, some mourners bathe in or anoint others with rinse water from the washing of corpses. Understudies of socially prominent members of these secret societies have been known to sleep near a highly infectious corpse for several nights, believing that doing so allows the transfer of powers.
Ebola has preyed on another deep-seated cultural trait: compassion. In West Africa, the virus spread through the networks that bind societies together in a culture that stresses compassionate care for the ill and ceremonial care for their bodies if they die. Some doctors are thought to have become infected when they rushed, unprotected, to aid patients who collapsed in waiting rooms or on the grounds outside a hospital.
As several experts have noted, when technical interventions cross purposes with entrenched cultural practices, culture always wins. Control efforts must work within the culture, not against it.
It’s an African problem.
Any American going into an Ebola region should NOT be permitted back into the United States for a year.
“Between 2014 and 2016, Ebola took 11,000 lives and infected 28,000 people in West Africa.”
“Ebola is a rare and highly infectious virus, with a variable death rate that averages around two-thirds but according to the WHO can be up to 90%.”
Both cannot be true, unless there were drastically better Ebola outcomes between 2014 and 2016.
So how many cases of Ebola have there been in the USA lately? Oh right, none. But it's our problem because here's where the money is. Got it.
I was quite concerned when CDC brought an Ebola patient from Africa to Atlanta, from thousands of miles & ocean distant, to about 30 miles from me.
I appreciate their concern for the patient, and the necessity of studying a live case ... but changing an extremely virulent & lethal disease from “not here” to “here” is a bad move. Fortunately all went well, but still don’t like the precedent.
I can recall multiple “health workers” that came back here to the US infected. They were allowed to get on aircraft loaded with people and flown here. Also, if memory serves me correctly there was a doctor flown here with his condition for medical care.
Now, I am not a medical professional but I do have common sense and thankfully God saw fit to give me copious amounts of it. If you are coming from an infected area and you were in a hot zone in direct contact with this nasty bugger you should be quarantined and stay in that turd world hole until your are cleared.
Is it me or has there just been a healthy does of stupidity been delved out in large amounts?
Happy New Year everyone...
Well what’s interesting here is that an Ebola vaccine was just approved by the FDA and yeah, it’s a LIVE VIRUS vaccine. That means those who receive it will shed the live virus for a period of time, potentially infecting others.
But I’m sure we won’t have an Ebola outbreak in the US or anything. /sarc
I’d have to go with, “..a healthy dose of stupidity delved out in large amounts”. After all, look how many people vote for democrats. That right there is a direct indicator of a stupid person.
I frequently cry over Africa. But anyone with half a brain who has ever spent any time there knows fully that ‘education’ will not make the slightest difference.
What is this? Nothing more than an early scare attempt to convince people they MUST get the new ebola vaccine. As more and more people understand that vaccines ARE causing illness, harm, and death, and thus are rejecting the stabs, the poor pharmas are in dire need of more cash.
Do you know in (at least) NY and VA there are bills to allow “medical personnel” to administer ANY vaccine to minors without parental knowledge or permission? Pretty cool, eh? :/
and recall they transport Ebola victims to the USA for treatment?
Violates first rule of containment of pathogens.
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