Hysteria In the Dark!

 alfalancy@yahoo.com

A person washing his body with salt

The day came with so much excitement although it was not Yam Festival or Tashe, or any African Culture Fiesta. The whole continent was thrown into an incomprehensible frenzy and hysteria, (especially the West African countries) as the citizens of the ‘Giant of Africa’ took charge; how people got horribly excited, jubilated, laughed, hollowed, jumped about, danced, sung, wrung their body, then danced and jumped again howling about this, regurgitating about that in an awful electrification like distracted living beings. With the news being disclosed, the atmosphere was thrown into hysteric thrill.

Some mischievous people broke the news “If you drink or bath yourself in salt-hot water, you have taken a reliable measure, a preventives against deadly Ebola virus.”  African magical realism, cure – or building civilization by magic, by folding arms and by doing nothing. Of course prayer is good but plus little action is be better.

Wait, I’ am not Conrad, a racist who questions the very portion of human identity. As I said it is not culture festival to align this to our tradition, it’s just a play with shallow intelligence and display of total ignorance. Criticism of this would not, and would never account to the subjugation of African culture and tradition, but a challenge to the opening of new perceptions.

That news made the headlines on social media that Friday morning of the 8^th August, 2014, the morning of massive hysteria and frenzy where family and friends communicated the word to each other like a family of hyena in communicating the word of a new kill to their brothers. A friend of mine told me that his girl friend’s phone call woke him up that morning.

“Hello dear, please wake up, drink and bathe in salt-hot water.”

“For what?”

“Don’t you know about Ebola virus? I have done my bath now. It’s prevention against Ebola.” She explained.

How come such a lethal misconception, more dangerous than Ebola itself? The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself for in this stampede two people who had excessively drank the salt water dropped dead and about twenty others were rushed to the hospital, says the online Vanguard’s report of 8^th August, 2014. It’s baloney!  

What caused all this fear about Ebola, and brought about all that hysteric excitement about its prevention? People have been hearing about Ebola and their understanding of it is nothing short of face-to-face with death.  It takes no more than twenty and one day before it’s patient dies from the infection right to the incubation period. It’s shortest way to the grave!

The deadly virus when infected into the body causes abrupt severe headache, fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches, and weakness. These early symptoms are followed by vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and conjunctivitis (inflammation of the mucous membranes in the eye), and internal and external flow of blood through mouth, nose and ears; and evidence of abnormal blood-clotting that is associated with profound shock. There are usually body openings and rashes. Death often follows quickly. (Murphy, Frederick A. "Ebola and Marburg Hemorrhagic Fevers.” 2008)

To prevent spreading and ensure maximum safety, health workers must work in special protective clothing, including hoods with controlled air flow, and full-body air-supplied suits that are pressurized to keep immediate air from entering, the use of gowns, gloves, masks, and lots of sterilizers. Even laboratories conducting research on the virus are in special buildings that must contain equipments such as filtered air exhaust and distillation systems, as well as other shielding features to block release of the viruses.

Our people have all the right to get into hysteria. I will not blame their ignorance that salt+hot water bathing is prevention of the deadly virus. But will blame the leadership of some African countries, specifically those ones in West Africa and especially the government of the communities where the virus was first discovered on the continent and the currently worst-affected countries. Nigeria as innocent country, previously Ebola-free, one may contemplate, shares some part of the blame.

Before the virus was actually found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first detection of the virus began in Germany and Yugoslavia in 1967 where the virus caused seven deaths among laboratory workers processing kidneys of African monkeys, (ibid). These serious countries where the virus was initially discovered and other countries where the virus had no presence, concerned about the health of their citizens began to investigate to find out more about it.  Some of these countries took all the pain till they were able to gather some vital information about it and have taken some measures of control. I am not sure if one can tell any country among Liberia, sierra Leon and Democratic Republic of Congo that undertook the task to finding its cure. Where our country shares the blame is as Giant of Africa and in Africa where we are at least sharing continent with those countries and there is very much likeliest interactions among citizens compared to other states on other regions of the universe, Nigerian leaders should invest in the labs for the control and cure of the virus at least since other countries in faraway places had done that even though their citizens may not get affected unless by travel, and would have no fear to contract it except when they came to our continent on aid mission, helping us treating our own Ebola patients. Perhaps if it were up to our African leaders we could not even know how and where we can contact the virus. Probably we might only identify this when the virus killed as many of us as it wanted, until then we would get to realize that anybody who got contact with the natural host animals such as apes, monkeys and bats could become victims from the filovirus  family of virus called zoonoses – a disease that is transmitted from animal to man.

What made matter worst about the jittery, is that each outbreak of Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, according to expert, “has been traced to what is known as an index case, a person who became infected by coming into contact with a reservoir host animal. From the index case, transmission of virus between humans occurs by direct contact with infected blood or other body fluids, usually involving health-care personnel and family members caring for the sick patient. Transmission of Ebola virus has also occurred by handling ill or dead victim”, (ibid).

Like HIV/AIDs and unlike HIV, it’s transmitted through blood contact and in the case of Ebola body fluid as well. Unlike AIDs, a person killed by the disease can transmit the virus to another person who touches the body without special clothings.

Here came in the question of burial since people have uncertainty if our leaders have any provision on the ground to supply the apparatus to face such challenge. What do we expect to happen suppose that nothing was done on the ground? So people must get jittery and become very much alive upon hearing the prevention of the disease even through magic. Much to the people’ belief and acceptance of the unproven prevention despite it being heresy was that, had our people have trust and certainty in their leaders that they can do something wholeheartedly for our communities, people would have only accepted medical advice from government agencies. But since government failed, people, have to find alternatives elsewhere.

Worst still, our leaders have broken the bridge to development, which is education, so that have our people been educated they would have unequivocally dismissed such mischievous and baseless rumor the first instance they heard of it, while our hope would be directed to the health personnel working in the labs doing more work on the disease to find some measures. We have such African sons and daughters who despite the stingy budget allocated to the health sector can drag themselves to the level of brilliant and successful scientists who can fight any disease.

African leaders continue to loot and fail to equip our labs, and invest finance to rescue the entire healthcare system of our various communities. It’s lamentable to encounter some documents about patients seeking donation for medical treatment which hardly few, or no hospital in our dear country could undertake. If such patients could not find any donor person to pay their medical trip and other expenses, it means the death of those sons and daughters of Africa while one can log on his gadget and find foreign papers carrying headlines reading something like a son of, or a Nigerian President, a Governor or a Senator from Kano playing a high life in London and Paris clubs. I must say thank you to Sani Kwangila Yakasai for almost all the applications I found referred directly to his desk.

A this juncture, I will like to crave the indulgence of the readers to share one example of the failure and inaction of some African leaders through the mouth of a celebrated African writer, teacher and poet. Achebe is recounting in his memoir There Was A County, how a longest serving president of an African state left nothing but misery to his darling country.

Not too long ago my attention was caught by a radio news item about Africa. As I had come to expect, it was not good news, and it was not presented with, nor did it deserve, respect. It was something of a joke. This was the announcement of the death of President Eyadema of Togo, whom it described as the longest-serving president in Africa (or may be the world – I forgot which). Then it gave another detail: Eyadema had died from heart attack even as he was about to be flown to Europe for treatment.

 Why there was not a well-equipped hospital in Togo to attend to his treatment for that long time of his tenure as a president? The worst would apply to a poor Togolese citizen who would die silently without an attempt to travel to Europe since there was no hospital in Togo to care for his illness. Eyadema fell into the very pit he had dug for others.

This fear that our government could not do anything for us for since 1976 one could not tell if there is any African country that embarked to investigate about the virus and find it’s measures and control as well as its cure. It was not first broke in Africa as we read earlier, but we did not hear any case about Ebola in the countries where it first infected people working in the labs. Those countries are more concerned about their people.

Such fear, despair and uncertainty made somebody to tell me that if the disease becomes epidemic throughout the continent, we Africans would just start breaking borders to pour into other continents to make it pandemic so that the whole world must work to find it control and cure. I asked him what if other countries have deployed their troops to gun down anybody breaking into their territory. He replied we just have to find someone very determined, (another Patrick Sawyer), and send him to risk bullets and touch one of the troops so he can get infected. To him an altruistic, but devilish work to spread the disease to the citizens of some countries so that their serious leaders with their citizens at heart must work to find its cure so that we, the helpless can benefit on their mercy since our leaders have woefully failed. Then why can’t we stand to that refine conduct to make a little move away from that raw savagery? I have to stop here to thank those doctors and volunteers who sacrificed their lives in treating others, for it is only then and only then with their commitments that the spreading of the disease is being brought under control.

Although health workers have been educating people that the virus is not airborne. Keiji Fukada, WHO Head of Health Security has this to say, “this is not a mysterious disease, this is an infectious disease that can be contained.” And he concluded, “It is not a virus that is spread by the air.”  But our people have long believed that the end has just come! We’ll all simply die one after the other. And you guess what? This is why more fear and hysteria flourished in the minds of the citizens of the Giant of Africa plus the belief that we have comatose regimes. But even before the coming of necrotic Ebola Patrick Sawyer, Nigerians have even gone to create a new way of greeting where people stand at a safe distance and wave instead of the usual handshaking.

Ebola greeting

However, another important point we fail to understand is that even in Sierra Leon, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo where the outbreak is worst, BBC report revealed that cases of death stood at 1013 in the region, with Liberia having about 5 million population (2008 census), Sierra Leon 6 million by the UN 2011 estimates and DR Congo 75m. While at home WHO reported that we have only thirteen ‘probable cases’  and three deaths with the recent death of the ECOWAS official since the arrival of Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer  in July into our beloved Nigeria. Have the virus devoured the population of the most at-risk countries; we could have fallen into such panic. Experts’ report said that fatality rate can reach 90% but the current outbreak stands at 55%. And this is the unprecedented outbreak ever recorded in the history of the virus. With right measures and steps it would be contained.

 In retrospect we can clearly see that more than a hundred can be killed by the single bomb of Boko Haram. Some others might be killed innocently from the reckless driving and over-speeding of mad drivers in the streets of Kano.  Many other might even be murdered in a car accident owing to the deathtrap roads along Kano-Abuja axis, Enugu to Bayelsa or Lagos to Oyo. All these can come close to the seven-month old Ebola related-death ratio in just few months if we calculate the statistics happening by the day.

In contrast to our panic, have we being so panicking about poverty and taken so much charge as we did in Ebola in fighting other viruses such as begging, cadging and subsisting on others to seek economic empowerment instead, and become self-reliant to be able to pay the school fees of own children as well as putting the bill of medical expenses, many who died from lack of five thousand naira medical bill would have saved their lives. Have we taken so much charge in fighting ignorance and corruption, we would have no worry even when Ebola came for we would have well-equipped labs and doctors to fight the virus as dividends of our educational and political progression.

On the final note, it appears that Ebola virus is like all other diseases that sent chilly fear into the minds on their latest discovery. A friend of mine studying medicine at Bayero University Kano told me that their lecturer was telling them the madness HIV/AIDs caused back around 70s-80s. The lecturer was doing his internship in Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, when they tested a patient and found him HIV positive. That day the entire hospital was thrown into delirious frenzy and confusion. Other patients felt more hope of life and trooped to see the HIV patients despite their ailments. Some patients had even quitted the hospital without physician’s approval. Some nurses had instantly issued their resignation for fear they might get infected. But for now, statistics has shown that hardly one can go out without interacting with HIV patient without him knowing. The issue of fear for HIV is now fading to the background because of the steady knowledge, precautions, procedures and treatment doctors have found about it. The same will apply to Ebola, as at now there are reports that two Americans being treated with an experimental drug are vividly making recovery. 

Twitter @abubakarsulai13