EBOLA: WE NO READY! PART 1 The drama that played out last week when the Prime Minister appeared to have stood-up to the attempted brinkmanship of the United States State Department that wanted to airlift, from Belize, two persons that were suspected of being exposed to the Ebola virus and who were on a cruise ship anchored off Belize City, though commendable, may have been orchestrated for political grandstanding. This was plain and simple, in the final analysis, just theatrics, a side bar that for a while distracted from the real issue of incompetence that placed many Belizeans, working at the frontline of the cruise ship industry at serious risk of exposure to this deadly disease. The Prime Minister, by his own admission, was ambivalent and therefore indecisive, in dealing with the State Department. This could be interpreted to mean that he is not up-to-speed with the national state of affairs and that he pretended not to be aware of the maladministration of the Ministry of Health. LOOMING DANGER It is very unlikely that the Prime Minister and his officials in that Ministry would have known of this looming danger, were it not for the US State Department’s call and the vigilance of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Worse was the fact that at a press conference hosted by the Prime Minister, held last Friday, the same day the news broke, the media and the public were taken through a series of loops and spins and half-truths by those who flanked him at the Head table - his Minister of Immigration and the “Imperial” Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Health. He jumped through loops to cover his ass with lies and half-truths to give the Belizean public a false sense of security and the appearance that the Health Ministry was prepared to deal with an Ebola crisis. He gave the impression that his Ministrty’s Ebola emergency machinery was prepared to work like a Swiss watch. Bluntly put, this was and still is a lie. There was, up until last Friday, no comprehensive plan, in Belize, to deal with this pandemic. AMBIVALENCE The Prime Minister should have known this and hence his ambivalence. This was also asserted a few weeks earlier by the Director of Health Services in the Ministry of Health. He was noticeably not at the press conference. So was not the Minister of Health, who, without a doubt, would have taken serious heat from the media for recurring reports of incompetence and corruption in his Ministry. A pun leaked out of the Ministry is that the Minister initially thought that the Ebola was a new SUV. To support this assertion by the Director of Health Services that we were not prepared to deal with the Ebola virus, the Chief Executive Officer in the Prime Minister’s Office, in outlining the timeline of events, after the PM was contacted by the State Department, commented “as soon as we knew of this situation we immediately contacted PAHO and other international agencies for advice on what protocols should be put in place.” “NO EBOLA PATIENT ON SHIP” SAYS CEO The CEO in the Ministry of Health lied at the press conference when he said that there is “no Ebola patient on the ship” even though the situation was still fluid. His assertion was premature since there was no diagnosis at the time! The two people who were suspected of possibly having Ebola on the ship were still in quarantine. Nobody knew then, or would have known, until days later, following the full incubation period of this highly contagious disease, whether or not the lab technician associated with the treatment of a person who had died earlier in a Texas hospital, and her companion on the ship, may have contracted the disease. We will not delve further into the numerous dangerous lies and half-truths that were promulgated at that press conference. However, we must add that it was unprofessional, deceptive and ass covering by a persistently incompetent individual who has given the people of this country a false sense of security and in the presence of the Prime Minister. Part 2 follows. Norris Hall 22nd.October,2014
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 01:51:16 +0000
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