By Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor and Nora Bowier
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Daniel
Berehulak for The New York Times
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MONROVIA, Liberia — The spread of the Ebola virus
across West Africa has been fast and deadly. The World Health Organization has
characterized the speed and extent of the outbreak as unprecedented.
To date, at least 2,288 people in the region have died, and some 4,269 confirmed or probable cases have been reported. But the global response has been underwhelming; the aid group Doctors Without Borders has characterized international efforts to tackle the crisis as “dangerously inadequate.”
To date, at least 2,288 people in the region have died, and some 4,269 confirmed or probable cases have been reported. But the global response has been underwhelming; the aid group Doctors Without Borders has characterized international efforts to tackle the crisis as “dangerously inadequate.”
Liberia
has been hardest hit by the epidemic. So far the country has counted 1,224
likely Ebola deaths, of which 508 have been confirmed by laboratory testing.
Most of its hospitals have either closed or are barely functioning. In Bong
County, in the north, the two largest hospitals have been shuttered, leaving
over 330,000 people without health care. As foreign staff depart, borders close
and the last planes leave, it seems that the world intends to cut us off and
allow us to die.
Though the risks to the West posed by Ebola are
minimal, Western media have fanned irrational fears, fueling panic about the
spread of the virus to Europe and North America rather than calling for
international assistance to combat the crisis in West Africa.
The Western press
blames superstition, myths and ignorance for the virus’s spread through the
region — not the fact that West African facilities are inadequate and
overwhelmed; government finances are already stretched to capacity; there is
widespread corruption and poor coordination among government agencies; and the
international response has been pitiful.
Liberia,
which emerged from its 14-year civil war in 2003, simply does not have the
infrastructure to manage the Ebola crisis. It should not be expected to handle
the worst outbreak of the world’s deadliest virus on its own. The international
community must act now to stop the situation from spiraling further out of
control.
Liberia began rebuilding its health system
following the end of the war; a reconstruction process that was nowhere near
complete when the virus struck. Combating Ebola requires significant medical
expertise and manpower, expensive equipment for real-time testing, and
treatment centers. Liberia, which lacks enough personnel to transport victims to
the facilities that do exist, is far from being able to provide these
state-of-the-art resources.
One 120-bed isolation unit,
opened in August in Monrovia, the capital, by Doctors Without Borders, reached
capacity in its first week. Many families have been forced to care for their
loved ones at home, as they are either unable to find ambulances to transport
them to treatment centers, or turned away upon arrival due to lack of space.
This has only accelerated the spread of the virus. According to Red Cross
representatives in Liberia, the crematorium in Monrovia is unable to keep up
with the number of dead bodies it receives, and has had to turn away the highly
contagious corpses of victims.
The Liberian legislature’s health
committee concedes that the government’s Ebola Task Force cannot manage the
prevention and treatment of suspected and confirmed cases of the virus, and has
stressed the need for international agencies to take over coordination of the
Ebola response. Doctors Without Borders, too, has concluded that Liberia’s
health system can’t cope. The country urgently needs properly equipped and
fully staffed treatment centers in its largest cities and Ebola hotspots.
The W.H.O., in an
assessment released this week, found that in Montserrado county, which
includes the capital, 1,000 beds are needed to treat infected Ebola patients;
only 240 are currently available. There is also an urgent need for medical
expertise and human resources, including infectious disease experts and
disaster relief specialists, to implement coordinated national and regional
responses.
But the problems facing the country go beyond the
virus itself: Liberia must now also manage an array of secondary crises that
have metastasized in the wake of the Ebola outbreak. As medical facilities
close due to fears of contamination, many people have become ill or have died
from easily preventable and treatable diseases like malaria and diarrhea.
The
country imports at least half of its staple consumables; the suspension of many
international flights to Liberia has only increased food insecurity. With
prices rising and basic provisions dwindling fast, an uptick in refugees trying
to escape across borders is inevitable.
The Ebola outbreak is an
international crisis and demands an international response before the entire
region collapses into chaos. Absent massive international medical aid, Liberia
could see tens of thousands of deaths in the coming months.
And the spread of
the virus to neighboring Ivory Coast, Ghana and other countries in the region
could trigger an even larger humanitarian crisis.
How
many more families must be wiped out, how many more Liberians must die before
world leaders appreciate the severity of the situation, and act?
Silas
Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor is the founder of Liberia’s Friends of the
Earth/Sustainable Development Institute. Nora Bowier coordinates the
Institute’s community awareness and support team.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
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