Hysteria In the
Dark!
alfalancy@yahoo.com
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| 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 8th 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 8th 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.
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| 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
