The worst-ever outbreak of Ebola — a hemorrhagic fever that has in the past killed nine out of 10 people that contract it — is raging through the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, with consequences so dire that the Liberian Minister of Defense characterized it as “… spreading like wildfire, devouring everything in its path.” In this so-called Hot Zone, a term made famous by the 1994 book, more than 2,000 Africans of all ages and from various socioeconomic backgrounds have already died, and the World Health Organization estimates that as many as 20,000 fatalities might occur before the epidemic is contained. Both the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s head, Tom Frieden, and the operations director of Doctors without Borders, Bart Janssens, have described the situation as “out of control.” One reason why it has been so difficult to tackle the Ebola crisis is fear, which prevents healthcare workers from grappling effectively with the situation. Fear can hobble an organization; for instance, recent research shows that at Nokia, fear led to paralysis, isolating the headquarters from the marketplace and rendering it unable to respond to a fast-changing situation.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 10:15:08 +0000