MONDAY LINES Ebola’s Requiem for Hippocrates 25.Aug.2014 Lasisi Olagunju Two medical doctors, Stella Adadevoh and Kent Brantly attended to patients from same country. The patients suffered from the same ailment. The doctors ended up contracting the disease called Ebola from these Liberian patients. These doctors shared quite similar fates but the similarity ends here. One of the doctors is dead; one is alive. Adadevoh was a Nigerian, she is dead. Brantly an American, is alive. There is another parallel in this Ebola tragedy. Nancy Writebol, an American aid worker, and Justina Ejelonu, a Nigerian nurse, also contracted Ebola while attending to Liberian victims of the deadly virus. Just like Brantly and Adadevoh, the Nigerian is dead; the American lives.The point of departure in their fates just happened to be their nationality and the value their different countries place on what is valuable. While the families of Stella and Ejelonu mourn the death of their irreplaceable dear ones, the Americans are upbeat that theirs came out of the illness in celebrations. “Today is a miraculous day. I’m thrilled to be alive, to be well and to be reunited with my family..I cannot thank you enough for your prayers and your support, but what I can tell you is that I serve a God who answers prayers. God saved my life, a direct answer to thousands and thousands of prayers…Thank you to the Liberia community, Emory hospital and so many of you, my family, friends and church family. Above all, I am forever grateful to God for sparing my life and I’m glad for any attention my sickness has attracted to plight of West Africa in the midst of this epidemic. Please continue to pray for Liberia and the people of West Africa and encourage physicians of leadership and influence to do everything possible to bring this Ebola outbreak to an end.” That was Brantly after his Ebola ordeal was over. Would Brantly and Writebol be alive today if their country had left them in Liberian hospitals? America moved its own to Emory University Hospital in special planes. A report even said Writebol’s movement from the airport to the hospital was aired live on television. It was America’s way of dramatising its celebration of heroism in the American spirit. I am not very sure the Nigerian government would bring home an Ebola infected doctor from anywhere. Even at death, his or her body would be declared persona non grata in Nigeria, generously donated to fertilise the soil of other lands. Brantly did not give the glory or the credit of his miraculous recovery to ZMapp or any other experimental substance. He gave the glory to God’s faithfulness and the cedit to millions around the world praying for him, and to his country that gave him the opportunity to get out of Liberia to Emory hospital alive. Granted that Nigeria really improved greatly in the way it has responded, so far, to this Ebola scourge but would it have been so if the disease had not been one without any respect for class? Ebola, from what it has achieved so far, has clearly made a statement proving its disdain for the rich and the poor. Suddenly, from the Villa to the 36 Government Houses, it dawned, in a jolting manner, on all that all were as vulnerable in the hands of Ebola as the hungry labourer dying everywhere where poverty reigns. And that exactly explains the unusual seriousness in certain tardy official quarters to the Ebola scourge. Some have really been exceptional in doing the needful. The Lagos State government, in particular, has shown the world how well the black man can manage emergency situations. And the results have shown in the number of survivors. What am I saying? Seriousness on the part of all? What about Ebola threatening all- the tall and the short; the young and the old; women and children; and the Federal Government, that very moment announcing the sack of 16,000 resident doctors? (Don’t mind the jejune official explanation that they were just suspended and not fired). Shouldn’t the doctors have called off their strike the moment the national emergency over Ebola stared all of us in the face? What happened to the Hippocratic oath they all took? And, should government reaction be the sack announcement?. And I am interested in the N1.9billion the Federal Government released weeks ago to combat Ebola. You release money and at the same time sack those who will make the money work! Can you understand the logic here? Except, the money is really meant for something else. I wrote two weeks ago that Ebola would become big business in the hands of many in Nigeria. I hope, by now, the N1.9billion has not been exhausted by the bureaucracy in government and its collaborators. A colleague jokingly informed me five days ago that we should not be surprised if we hear the money is finished and more is needed to fight Ebola. The dreary thought in the minds of these officials is to keep Ebola alive so that its eradication could become a standing, money spinning ritual like other deadly diseases before it. Think! (I could hear the government official reading this abusing me and wondering what I know about how government works and how funds are disbursed). I laugh. It is exactly because I do not know anything that I will be glad to hear or read how the funds are disbursed. We, at least know, that previous unexplained disbursements in all sectors have led to the present state of coma that has claimed the lives of Dr Adadevoh and her other compatriots. Once again, I salute Fashola’s Lagos that did not wait for some government based in Abuja before saving the nation a calamity deadlier than Boko Haram which has defied all Abuja logics. As Nigerians commend Lagos, they should also give God the glory that Ebola did not enter Nigeria through Abuja. If that had been the route, you and I know what would have become of Nigeria.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 06:28:41 +0000
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