August 07, 2014

How the lack of trust devastatingly fuels the proliferation of Ebola

editor:	Murat Suner

According to the Wall Street Journal the World Bank pledged as much as $200 million in emergency funding to help three West African nations fight the deadly Ebola epidemic following requests from the World Health Organization and officials from the three countries.

However, these news shouldn't spread too much optimism. According to global health experts Ebola outbreak concentrated in West Africa is “out of control,” and the international community has no organized plan to address it.

Laurie Garrett, senior global health fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations says: “We’re now in a perfect storm. There is no strategic plan for how this epidemic will be brought under control.”

Her further explanations reveal a misperception of WHO's real capabilities: “People believe that there’s a giant World Health Organization office in Geneva stocked full of specialized equipment and talented health care workers. Not only do we not have any such thing - the WHO is essentially bankrupt.”

The Huffington Post says "it is telling that the largest response group in West Africa - Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), which has more than 550 staff members on the ground - is a volunteer group. Furthermore, the group's tired workers have issued plea after plea in recent days for someone else to take over. More than 60 health care workers have been infected by the Ebola virus, including some of the most famous physicians in the battle against the disease."

When Ebola came to the Kailahun district of eastern Sierra Leone in late May, the government put out a series of messages telling people how to recognise and avoid the disease - among other things by avoiding exposure to victims’ blood, sweat, saliva or to dead bodies. Few villagers took any notice. Instead, a string of wild theories is circulating, including suggestions that the government and aid agencies are intentionally spreading the disease, reports The Economist.

According to Garret health care workers are describing themselves as “in a state of siege - feeling that the population despises and loathes them. Rumors are rife that they are actually deliberately infecting people, cutting off people’s arms and selling them on some alleged international market, and even that there are health care workers who are cannibals.”

The outbreak demonstrates not only there are far too little resources to fight the disease, but a chronic lack of trust between ordinary Sierra Leoneans, their government and the aid-giving Western world.