Sometimes you just can’t fight stupid. I feel sorry for the people there who do have some brains and are trying to fight this ignorance.
Back in the 1970s, I knew someone who joined the Peace Corps because he wanted to help in an African country. He had some medical knowledge, so he was sent to work at a hospital in Zimbabwe.
He came home early because he could not take dealing with the backwardness in the hospital. One example that I can easily recall is that the workers in the hospital — no matter how many times they were instructed otherwise — would take disposable syringes out of their sterile packaging and wash them in water.
It's worse than this....they re-use them on patients. Which of course spreads disease.
There's such a scarcity of medically trained staff, (and supplies), that locals are brought in to assist, who bring with them their beliefs and superstitions. So even the training that is given doesn't address these superstitions which will always trump medicine.
I’m sorry to hear about your dear friend’s frustration. He did the right thing in giving up and he was smart to give up on them. The Liberians are in fact the reason this happened and I thank God (as far as I know) that bush-meat isn’t widely consumed, but it’s only a matter of time until someone comes over here and ends up selling it, or brings it for their own consumption. Then a lovely outbreak of Ebola erupts in this country.
Their stupidity with AIDS as well, still raping infants and young girls because they cling to superstitious myths.