SOS From Liberia: WHO, Others Must Step In Before We All Die

Judging from what happened in Monrovia last week, self-seeking presidential aides and kitchen Cabinet officials will shortly conclude and run to the president to say that this is a call for an interim government. IT IS NOT!!! This is an honest and sincere appeal to international humanitarian groups and the WHO to move in and for the president to dissolve her "Special Ebola Task Force because they have all failed and appear incapable of solving this plague killing our people and flirting with anarchy.

THIS IS AN URGENT SOS call to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and every international humanitarian organization to please intervene in Liberia before Africa’s oldest republic loses its entire population.

THE UNITED NATIONS must immediately call for the disbandment of the Liberian government task force and replace it with an international medical and management team capable of righting the wrongs by the post-war nation’s health system and saving many more Liberians from losing their lives.

WHAT HAPPENED last Saturday at a makeshift Ebola center in West Point is from our perspective the last straw that has broken whatever back this country or its government had in curbing the further spread and containing this deadly plague that has so far killed more than 2000 people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, since it emerged in February.

WHEN RESIDENTS in one of Liberia’s most populous and disease-infected areas run amok against an initiative undertaken by a volunteer nurse, who simply tried to do right for his people with a self-initiative isolation center because the government had turned its backs on the people, it is time for the international players to step in.

IN NURSE SAM TARPLAH’S OWN WORDS: “Some of the people kept at the center at the MV Massaquoi School were diagnosed positive and told to be in isolation at home because of insufficient space at the ELWA isolation center.”

TARPLAH SAID knowing the risk the presence of these Ebola positive patients will cause the community when they at home, he decided to keep them in one location, though not in the same room. According to him, there were a total of 29 persons that the center, but nine had died over the last few days. A day ago, he said a week patient fell on his forehead and died.

BY NIGHT FALL Saturday, at least seventeen positively tested Ebola patients had fled the facility. According to Tarplah, a lady from Bardnersville who brought food for her husband and a son, two of them Ebola positive, became angry when she was not allowed entry and as such some residents of West Point, assisted her in erecting sticks on the wall of the fence where the man and his son escaped. The remaining 17 left the isolation center assisted by angry residents of the West Point Community.

WHEN GOVERNMENT security and police forces are misguided in their priorities of sending armed police officers with tear gas to shut down a newspaper office and arrest journalists in the middle of a State of Emergency, when those officers should be assisting health workers and makeshift Ebola centers like ones in areas like West Point, maintain order, it is time for the international players to step in.

WHEN A PRESIDENT, knowingly appoints to a task force the same personalities in the health sector responsible for failing Liberia when this plague first started, it speaks volumes to the lack of seriousness, this government is applying to this crisis which according to major international stakeholders has gone out of control.

THESE OLD hands have nothing new to offer Liberia in this particular crisis. They all need to be replaced. This crisis does not need quantity, it needs quality, a small, tight-knit group of experts and ordinary folks who have Liberia at heart, not the same old hands who have failed us when their leadership is needed most.

BLAIR GLENCORSE AND BROOKS HARMON, writing in the current edition of Foreign Policy magazine said it rightly: “The Ebola crisis is quickly exposing how rapidly progress can be undermined, however, when it is not grounded in a fair, inclusive social compact between governments and their citizens. It is no coincidence that, in the countries at the heart of the outbreak, large groups of people have been systematically excluded from power and decision-making at all levels for decades. This means many citizens are unwilling to believe that the government can serve their interests. The health system in Liberia is a case in point. Despite millions of dollars of investment in the decade before the Ebola outbreak, there were only 150 trained doctors in the entire country of 3.5 million people. As a result, access to services is inevitably exclusionary, lending itself to networks of corruption as patients do anything they can to receive care.”

WHEN THE CASUALTY numbers in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea where the outbreak started, continue to drop and Liberia’s numbers continue to climb, it is time for international players to step in.

WHEN AFTER watching most of their colleagues die and isolated by a government which failed to provide simple gloves and masks, which nurse or doctor in their right state of mind would want to return to work when a government makes promises to make conditions better in the absence of insurance or a guarantee to health care-workers' family that they will be taken care of in the event of death or infection?

WHEN RESIDENTS in communities far and wide continue to complain about the slow pace of the government to pick up dead bodies from the street and respond to suspected cases, it speaks volumes and it is time for the international players to step in.

WHEN A GOVERNMENT has failed to dispute several international media reports Friday, quoting the government’s claim that it has spent $US12 million dollars between April and June on fighting Ebola, it is time for international players to step in.

SORRY FOR OUR EXPRESSION, but there is no way in hell, that any government has spent that much money on this crisis when people are still angry, when bodies are lying on the streets, when Ebola call centers are ill-equipped with simple necessities as a generator to keep the lights burning and when a volunteer nurse has to set up his own isolation center because the government has turned its back on his community.

JUDGING FROM what happened in Monrovia last week, self-seeking presidential aides and kitchen Cabinet officials will shortly conclude and run to the President to say that this is a call for an interim government. IT IS NOT!!!. This is an honest appeal to international humanitarian groups and the WHO to move in and for the president to dissolve her "Special Ebola Task Force because they have all failed and appear incapable of solving this plague killing our people and flirting with anarchy.

THE STATE OF EMERGENCY is in play but is far from working because priorities are twisted and Liberia just doesn’t get it when every neighbor around it has, even after so many deaths, isolation and our backs against the wall.

AS HENRIQUE CAINE, a businessman and commentator aptly surmised on his Facebook page Sunday: “If a real and true state of emergency was being implemented with the full weight of the national security apparatus, the crap that happened in the slums of West Point on Bushrod Island would not be happening. Period!!!. I still believe we are taking this thing for play-play on all levels, so why the heck do we expect poverty stricken slum dwellers to behave any differently.”

THIS IS NOT a Brad Pitt fighting zombies in the movie, World War Z; or Morgan Freeman and Dustin Freeman on opposing sides of a deadly plague in Outbreak; or even Matt Damon fighting to save his family and the world in the Ebola-like Contagion movie. This is Liberia on the verge of extinction, if the world sits idly by and wait for this Liberian government, which has been given all the goodwill and international aid, to get it right. A Hint to the Wise!!!

Think of it from a typical person in that area (or honestly here) perspective.

Your friend goes to the hospital with typical flu symptoms and gets thrown in a ward with people who have ebola. Even if he has the flu, he is now dead.

Or if he does have it, you have been hearing on TV and the radio that is all a plot to kill you funded by the CIA. At first you think it silly, till you see body bags leaving the hospital and being burned out back. Remember they have little experience with Ebola.

People are stupid. I can see this happening in a major city in the US pretty easily.

>> This thing is a lot scarier than the press is reporting.

It’s important to understand that a Republican is not POTUS; therefore, there is nothing to worry about.

Good points, btw.

While I agree that people can be stupid about everywhere, there are several huge differences. To start with, look at the CIA Factbook for Liberia, under “People and Society”:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook//geos/li.html

The largest of their top 10 ethnic minorities only has about 20% of the population. Likewise, to a great extent, tribes still rule their people, not the government.

Though it is the official language, only 20% of Liberians can speak English. The other 20 languages are primitive and rarely written.

43% of their population is below age 14.

.01 physicians per 1000 population. (US has 2.42 per 1000).

Their fresh water and sanitation are also lacking. US has almost 100% quality for both.

Note also that Liberia has an entry for Major Infectious Diseases.

The US has had a top notch epidemic disease response for well over 100 years; and during WWII, there was an enormous government initiative to teach the public hygiene, which continues today.

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