The Ebola Challenge,By Dan Agbese

There are good enough reasons for us to panic. Ebola has neither cure nor prevention. A disease this deadly and this elusive conjures fears of Armageddon. The rest of the world correctly recognises it as the latest in a cocktail of health challenges facing modern medicine and medical research. Ebola is not about to bring about the end of the world but its fear casts a pall on our country and other countries in the sub-region, particularly Liberia and Sierra Leone, where it has established a beachhead with dire consequences beyond their borders.
So far, the response of the federal and some of the state governments have been reasonably measured and encouraging. They have taken some sensible measures to contain its possible spread. These measures do need the co-operation of all Nigerians to achieve their common goal of locking the door against the disease.
I wonder if the federal government ban on inter-state transfer of corpses is enforceable. When the president quoted the president of WHO as saying that 60 per cent infections were spread the conveying of corpses, she certainly could not have meant that the corpses of people who did not die of the virus automatically turn into virus carrying corpses. It makes more sense to order that the corpses of certified victims of the virus be buried immediately where the death occurred.
The measures taken so far help to raise public hope in the capacity of the governments to wrestle the deadly virus to submission. Still, these measures by no means sufficiently answer the critical question about how the virus is contracted and how it is spread. We are all confused about this. Each one of us is responding to it as blindly as we think – with deleterious effect on social and even family interactions. Hugging and handshakes are out. And people whose job demands interaction with the public are wearing hand gloves. And if you would excuse a hackneyed saying, prevention is always better than cure.
I fear, however, that ignorance and its exploitation are the more insidious challenges facing our governments than even the virus itself. Ignorance opens the ignorant to their willful exploitation by the unscrupulous. Within the first few days of the virus making its presence known in the country, some families, anxious not to be reduced to Ebola statistics, became victims, not of the virus but of their ignorance. People were advised to bathe with salt water and then consume large quantities of it. Some families went one tragic step better: they rubbed the salt into their bodies to form a shield against the invading virus. Brine has a bad effect on hypertension. Those who have high blood pressure and who have been induced to drink salt water will aggravate their health challenge.
I am aware that our redoubtable men and women of God have waded in to exploit the ignorant too. They are offering instantaneous cure and prevention in the mighty name of Jesus. Prayer houses operated by prayer warriors are full of families hankering after the ultimate cure, divine cure, for the Ebola virus.
Panic wrapped in ignorance creates problems, particularly in a society such as ours that has not quite weaned itself from primitive myths and old wives’ tales. The readiness of people to accept any and all suggestions for preventive measures speaks less of their ignorance but more of their belief that they are doomed in a country whose health delivery system shows the clear pork marked face of arrested development. The babalawo, diviners, the growing number of herbalists and the slick men and women who conjure cure for all diseases and solutions to all problems, enjoy greater confidence of the average Nigerian than the barely existing health delivery system. We run to them because their medications are not out of stock.
The real challenge of this latest health challenge is the overhaul of our health delivery and preventive systems. This country should have first class medical facilities whose impact on the populace is so comprehensive and so embracing that they enjoy the confidence of the citizenry. Whatever measures the federal and state governments are taking in the face of the Ebola challenge are actually nothing deeper and more lasting than the fire brigade approach that has always characterised official response to similar challenges. When the danger is gone and we can shake hands and hug again and not carry bottles of sanitizing fluids around with us, Rip Van Winkle will find a cool shade under the tree and continue with what he does best: sleep. Until, that is, another panic rouses him from slumber.
This is not, to be sure, an entirely bad thing. If we had first class medical facilities, how do you expect the growing large number of herbalists to survive? Their alternative cures may have no scientific basis but this is not a matter of science but the anxiety by individuals to get well. You don’t expect the prayer warriors who badger God on behalf of those who can afford their fees to be deprived of well-heeled clientele. It is always a joy to see such people laughing daily to the banks. When the country rebases its economy in the near future, their earnings should earn our nation an even more respectable place in the comity of world economic giants.
Pox on Ebola.