Norimitsu Onishiaug of the New York Times writes an article entitled, Clashes Erupt as Liberia Imposes Quarantine to Curb Ebola, describing an outbreak of violence in Liberia's capital city of Monroiva. Residents of the West Point section, woke up this morning to discover they had been cordoned off by government national police forces in riot gear who erected barbed-wire barricades over night, because the poorest West Point areas is one of the "dumping ground" areas Liberia has been warehousing infected patients.
Soldiers opened fire as hundreds of angry young men tried to escape by storming the barricades. Others tried to escape the quarantined areas in canoes. The out-of-control Ebola epidemic has crossed the invisible grey line of "merely" heartbreaking and tragic to several level up from that of "gut wrenching humanitarian disaster" in progress. Yet western media reports barely mentioned it. On an errand with my partner at Office Max I sat down on one of their display chairs because of back pain and remembering this article I started to cry - something I was brought up never to ever do in public.
Many people in West Point were already seething at the government’s attempt to open an Ebola center at a school in their neighborhood, complaining that suspected Ebola patients from other parts of the city were being brought there as well. Their neighborhood, they feared, was effectively being turned into a dumping ground for the disease.
On Saturday, hundreds of people stormed the school, carrying off supplies and provoking suspected Ebola patients to flee the facility, heightening concerns that the disease would spread through the city.
One teenager in the crowd, Shakie Kamara, 15, lay on the ground near the barricade, his right leg apparently wounded by a bullet from the melee. “Help me,” pleaded Mr. Kamara, who was barefoot and wore a green Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt.
Lt. Col. Abraham Kromah, the national police’s head of operations, said:
“This is messed up,” he said, looking at the teenager while complaining about the surging crowd. “They injured one of my police officers. That’s not cool. It’s a group of criminals that did this. Look at this child. God in heaven help us.”
How moving that Lt. Col. Kromah has the rare compassion to include this wounded and dying child in his sympathies. Even in Africa shooting young black children is not something all senior police or military officers would express sympathy for. Notice though that in a pattern we've become accustomed to he is blaming the civilians for the fact one of his own soldiers shot this poor child.
Thank goodness shooting American black children seems to be something our society is willing to stand up, denounce, protest, and take sufficient interest to say this must stop. Sadly, in the escalation of Ebola deaths at the rate of now over 80 ever two days, with no end in site we can barely find mention on national news. And little response or discussion even here. Here we seemingly see a case of African lives not counting as much, not because of race, but because they are not Americans. Maybe this is some kind progress we should be celebrating?
Part of the reason this brings tears to my eyes even again while I try to finish this article in a que of tragic reports piling up faster than I can write about, is imagining this child's pleas sound to me through the internet no different from my own son's - and given that Liberia and Sierra Leone have a per capita annual health expenditure of $8 and $14 or in that area.
And worse, what little health infrastructure they do have has collapsed and according to Dr. Liu, of MSF. So this poor child who was just trying to go along with his tribal members will probably die on the streets as there are not medical clinics to take him to, and in his area no Doctors to treat him. How would people feel if that was one of your family, or loved ones?
And knowing this child may be lucky to die in only a few hours from bleeding out while now one helps him and he lies their facing death, by himself compared to those who are dying what has been described as one of the most agonizing deaths there is over a week.
I haven't read any information yet about whether or not Ebola patients are being prescribed any pain killers. If not, why has it not occur to anyone here that if this vast African suffering has not already risen to the level we could justify the trivial hospice pain killers, that might ease this suffering we could have the D.E.A. ship over confiscated boatloads of opiates rather than burning them?
Oh wait! Silly me, the D.E.A. seems to believe pain reduction is not a worthwhile reason for doctors to prescribe opiate based drugs even to dying Americans in hospice centers. Why would I imagine they would care about Africans, some of who might survive and face addiction issues. Sorry, I'm so tired, stressed out, and disturbed by the non-newsworthy ongoing humanitarian disaster in Western Africa it is throwing me off my "game."
Dr Liu described encounter six pregnant women walking the streets unable to find anyone help them deliver apparently in part do to the few remaining health officials around not wanting to risk an agonizing death of Ebola from encountering patient blood with no available protective gloves and other personal protective equipment.
“The emergency within the emergency is the collapse of the health care system,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors without Borders, who recently surveyed Liberia and other affected nations. “People don’t have access to basic health care,” she said, including malaria treatment for children, medical care for pregnant women and other common but essential needs.
Dr. Liu said that her team had come across six pregnant women who had been wandering around Monrovia for hours, looking for a facility that could help deliver their babies. “They couldn’t find one,” she said. “By the time we attended to them,” she added, the babies had died.
“All the health care facilities are basically closed in Monrovia,” she added. “I think there may be some marginal activities, but basically there’s nothing really working right now.”
Complicating matter is that Liberia is still recovering from a brutal 14 year civil war where members of different tribes have hacked each other to death with machettes. One of the many false rumors I've read elsewhere is many rural people in one half of the country (the eastern if I remember correctly) believe Ebola is a hoax, or is being spread on purpose by health authorities on purpose to vastly reduced their census count and allocation of congresspeople before the next election.
Another rumor developed to explain why loved ones go into these government sponsored " health tents"tents looking perfectly well, and then die and are never seen again as their bodies mysteriously carted off in white body bags is that the western health authorities are harvesting body parts from Africans. Thinks about it, this is certainly more plausible on the face of it that are experts are there out of compassion to help. If they had electricity or TV's and could see our wall to wall television coverage one American black child getting shot meriting nearly a month coverage, with no mention of over a 1,000 African dying and the number expected to approximately double just over every month with no end in site.
They may not have TVs but they've heard that most Americans, and in fact nearly all westerners, (and probably easterners as well), have no interest or compassion for Africans, who have been dying regularly in millions per year of Lassa fever, malaria, cholera, diarrhea (yes, in Africa cholera and diarrhea can be fatal diseases for lack of pills to disinfect contaminated drink water that cost a few pennies or less a piece.) It is widely known throughout these areas that westerners do not give a shit about Africans, and also that healthy human kidneys, can fetch over $50,000 (from a memory long ago) in many Asian countries. China has been accused of harvesting organs from prisoners.
So let's not be too condescending when we criticize "rural uneducated" African village people who do not trust their government, their government soldiers, or western health authorities. In this regard their believe are much smarter and perceptive we give them credit for.
We can imagine how this ignorance makes "subjective sense" when one looks at the evidence - "there was no Ebola here until the western health authorities arrived," after which has spread like crazy, and now health authorities are working behind government troops and the Liberian government has announced intentions to arrest and incarcerate anyone not turning in those with flu like symptoms, even there own families.
People with such symptoms used to be taken to two-stage observation warehouse-clinics, where those with flu like symptoms are stored in the first warehouse, all together, and then if they develop certain symptoms of Ebola there are transferred to a second warehouse to see if they recover or die. Actually, calling them warehouses is an substantial exaggeration. Some of the pictures, you can see in this article show tents, with mattresses on mud floors with no running water, no electricity, and no toilets.
But, now according to statements from Dr. Liu of MSF in many of these facilities she's visited they are so overwhelmed all the patients and "suspected patients" some only those rounded up in "contact tracing," are all mixed together. She described one such facility designed for 45, or so people housing over 120. If you didn't have Ebola going in, it is hard to imagine you wouldn't have it soon after - even the health workers which explains in part why Dr Liu says the little health system Liberia has has essentially shut down.
This explains in part why family members and fellow tribe members have stormed these facilities to rescue family members even at risk of their own lives being shot by soldiers. In many areas health care workers have been driven away with rock throwing. I doubt any of us here would report any of our family members to authorities if they developed flu like symptoms are turned to have shown up on a contact tracing report. I certainly would not have reported my son in the hypothetical scenario that we were in such a situation.
But, this is part of why this situation brings tears to my eyes. Imaging that might be my son, or some other human being shot by troops and left dying on the street, or tossed into an Ebola warehouse because he's caught the flu and there would probably be no way I could help or protect him enables me to realize how much worse the entire population of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and perhaps soon Nigeria must feel.
For all I know this poor poor has somehow received fine medical treatment, so my feelings here may not be objective. But, even if this one child has survived with wonderful treatment so many others have not, that I believe my basic point is valid.
But the deeper truth is the scab this out-of-control Ebola has torn of our delusional fantasies that we live in a civilized world and human beings are some how better than the wild animals of the jungle. Experts tell us we Americans have little chance of being exposed to Ebola, and that even if we were our health system, contact tracing, and treatment capability so faster superior that we could easily contain it, as it is "relatively" hard to catch.
The more terrifying realization this epidemic exposes is the magnitude of our indifference and lack of compassion for our fellow human beings. And the realization that "for the grace of god," (or laws of probability if you are an atheist or scientific humanist), go I." While we may not find ourselves in such a situation from Ebola virus, if, or when, the avian flu virus mutates to airborne spread any of us could find ourselves in such a situation, and unless we are vastly wealthy not enough other human beings will care enough to lift a finger to help.
I find myself unable to offer my usual "our prayers and best wishes to all those afflicted" as in some ways this must be frustrating, painful, and perhaps even painful to hear over and over again several dozens of times from people like ourselves who have no real intention to do anything other than cheap word to help fellow humans in what for them is a ongoing life or death disaster "emergency" for every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, and in increasing probability possible year after year.
And let's be honest with ourselves. Millions and millions of Africans die every year from Malaria, Lassa ever, Diarrhea, Cholera, Filariasis, Plasmodium, Chagas disease, Zoa, Zoa, Schiastomiasis, Elephantiasis, African Sleeping Sickness, Enchephalitis, Trypanosomiasis, Trematode infections, Leishmaniasis, Onchocerciasis and dozens of other tropical diseases we haven't the least interest in because they are unlikely to reach us here And these deaths have been occurring for as long as we know and will continue for long after we are all dead.
The only reason we appear to care in the least about Ebola is that in the back of our minds we are afraid it might get here to America were the important and good people live. Once two young and attractive white Americans caught Ebola suddenly, miracle drugs, experimental waivers, and other fast response appeared from all directions. And, would appear the evidence suggests that once they got better and we imagine we can be cured we and our media have no more interest in those suffering in Africa.
So Ebola and these other diseases will continue ravage Africans, and others, in Africa with no end in sight. Tourism will collapse, perhaps a continental quarantine will create an economic disaster just as bad as the health disaster. The W.H.0. has already reported millions of Western Africans being cordons are in jeopardy of food and water deprivation.
And if we cross off Ebola, Latin American and South East Asians.
The only positive news on this front is that now that Dengue, and other previously tropical diseases have reach Florida, Texas, and Arizona I expect even Republicans will soon express outrage and demand to know what incompetence government and Obama administration has allowed them to cut funding for protecting Americans for these scourges.
Like usual I got so sidetracked that this post will not come out until most are asleep.
I will include a link to the website for Doctors Without Borders, aka Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, in an update.
8:13 PM PT: If you can please donate to Doctors Without Borders, aka MSF. If it were not for their courageous efforts we would have almost no one on the front line of compassion and defense helping from the international community. They are a private charitable group
https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/...
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