Ebola: The diaspora and contagion By Oby Nwakanma The United States government was the first government in the world to respond with care and urgency to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. ebola-virus-guinea-border.siThere is once more that example here of the United States as a force for good in the world. American health workers, in the discharge of their humanitarian functions have also fallen victim to the disease. The first two famous cases of Americans who came down with the Ebola disease, Dr. Kent Brantly and the missionary nurse, Nancy Writebol contracted it as volunteer health workers treating the disease in Liberia. They were quickly flown down to the United States and treated at Emory University Hospital, Atlanta, under close CDC watch. These two became cause celebre for Ebola as it brought the reality of this terrifying disease home for the first time to Americans and Diaspora Africans in the United States. The first reported case of Ebola diagnosed in America, Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas, Texas, the Sierra Leonean immigrant who reportedly came down with it after visiting his relatives in Sierra-Leone died in Texas this past Wednesday. His case threw more fuel into the raging debate of what to do with Africa and African travelers coming to the United States as potential carriers of the disease. The media here have forced attention to Ebola as a fast moving contagion of an apocalyptic proportion, and you’d think with the sheer frenzy of reportage, that Ebola has killed millions, like the Black Deaths of 13th century Europe, even though only about 1, 300 have so far died so far in West Africa for all that frenzy. Well, if the idea is to catch the public’s attention about a fast traveling, uncontainable disease moving with a scythe in the Dark Continent, they’ve got us, and we are paying attention. There is hope mixed in hopelessness.There is fear of a global contagion spreading from Africa. Ebola is disease sans frontiers. There is also great discussion about the failure of Africans to build the kind of infrastructure that could help contain it. It is a worrying and disquieting truth that the African continent, always totally infantilized and discriminated against in the global media agenda continues to reproduce the truths of its own helplessness. If Africans do not have the resources internally to contain this epidemic, the world must once again come to its rescue, not merely for the sake of Africa and Africans, but for the rest of the world too, given the reality of contemporary human intercourse. So then comes the United States of America with the first strategic response. America is the super power with a good heart. But there is also another dimension to it – that fundamental historical linkage between the United States and Africa. The United States is home to a vast population of the African diaspora, so much so in fact, that given the nature of that Atlantic linkage, no other nation outside of Africa has a greater claim, or ought to have a greater claim with an African connection more than the United States of America. The continent of Africa is a natural ally and partner with the United States in all ramifications. Her president has African roots, to start with. It was perhaps in recognition of America’s filial obligation to the African continent that the US president announced a series of interventions to contain Ebola. This week, the United States government will deploy an entire military division to West Africa, particularly to the three epicenters of the Ebola epidemic – Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The soldiers will build field hospitals and laboratories; install equipment, and help deal with this terrifying health emergency before it spreads far more definitively beyond borders. These are soldiers for peace and not for war, we understand, carrying out the United States humanitarian missions to afflicted areas. Now, you would think folks will be gratified by this robust American response and intervention. Repeatedly, health care works report that one of the most serious impediments to containing the Ebola spread among the local population in affected areas has been resistance and fear expressed by the victims and their relations, and a certain depth of skepticism about the disease and its origins. While researchers are pinning down the origins of Ebola to West Africans eating fruit bats, Africans are whispering that it is a disease made in the laboratory for depopulation and control, and all kinds of nasty intentions. I have heard all kinds of conspiracy theories and rumours and whispering campaigns among the circle of Africans and Diaspora Africans. The most colorful yet is that Ebola and the militarization of America’s health intervention gives the US leverage to establish its military bases through the backdoor in the heart of Sub Sahara Africa. Conspiracy theorists are of course ignorant and have wild imaginations. However, they are also capable of rousing popular discontent. If the US mission is to be successful it’d have to combat this level of cynicism and contend with it. To be a super power, even one with a good heart, is a lonely and often thankless vocation, especially in Africa where Africans have learnt to look a gift horse steadily in the mouth, and whose experience with slavery and colonialism is still a fresh and open wound. As for me, I say America’s intervention is a good thing. Real people are dying. It doesn’t even matter now the source of the disease, but the death it brings is real. The US has determined that it has the resources to bring succor to places of affliction, and so be it. Africa must learn to take care of its business, true. But if it is unable to do so, it will continue to be a charity case. It will continue to need America’s help and goodwill, and goodwill is reciprocal. Nigeria, which admirably contained its Ebola outbreak, once intervened militarily too in Liberia and Sierra Leone, using ECOMOG. Perhaps now is the time again for Nigeria and other West Africans, also using their regional military organization, ECOMOG, to join forces with the United States own effort in West Africa and rid the region of this contagion. President Obama is under a lot of pressures to close the US borders with West Africa. Senator Billy Nelson, Democrat of Florida for instance on Thursday, forcefullydemanded that the United States temporarily close down all contacts with the places in West Africa with Ebola. There is fear that Ebola might spread to the United States through a contagious diaspora. Senator Nelson’s suggestion is dangerous for two reasons: one, isolating these countries will lead to a collapse of their economy and governments, and two; a disrupted economic life leads to a massive refugee crisis which would feed the contagion. Ebola is a human challenge, and we must face it with a human resolve. But while the US is right to seek means of protecting its borders and the health of its population, it will make a great mistake if it specifically targets the traveling African and the African diaspora as a contagious population. We need to find here, a really good balance in dealing with the fallouts of this terrifying disease.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 06:08:26 +0000
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