Ebola: What lessons learnt?

Granted that the authorities may be guided by the concern that it may not serve the best public interest to raise the state of panic among the members of the public, the need also exists to prepare the people for any situation that may arise. A safer position therefore is that the pestilence as being […]

Granted that the authorities may be guided by the concern that it may not serve the best public interest to raise the state of panic among the members of the public, the need also exists to prepare the people for any situation that may arise. A safer position therefore is that the pestilence as being resident among us for some time, and is only revealing its identity under terms and conditions we now need to discover. That is why some of the fears that are now spreading about Ebola may be actually be unfounded, its hellish appetite for human flesh notwithstanding.
The fore going is not intended to discount the present state of heightened state of alert worldwide over the disease, and the associated frantic remediation efforts to save as many victims from its jaws. Hardly has any health related issue gripped the entire civilized world in recent memory as much as this Ebola has done.  This is how bad it is.
Yes Ebola kills, but it is not yet the plague of apocalyptic proportion it has been promoted to. Rather the present dispensation which has sent the fear of the Almighty down the spine of all and sundry,  is a penalty for our traditional negligence of the health care system in Africa in which our own dear country, Nigeria is a leading participant. It is poignant that the present attack of the illness came at a time when doctors were on one of their nationwide, incessant strike actions, which normally paralyse the healthcare system of the country.
Besides, events in the wake of the Ebola visit to the country have also exposed other systemic weaknesses in our healthcare system which include a fixation on traditional practices that are only justified by our unprofitable credulity, and unsustainable lifestyles with questionable linkages with modernity.
In spite of its dubious reputation as a weapon of mass destruction due to its high mortality rate, the medical community has offered welcome assurances that Ebola is beatable just as  current initiatives from that sector proves so. It is also encouraging that our courageous healthcare personnel, operating in sundry clinical battlefronts, are containing its worst, and spread in various ways at great personal risks to themselves and families, even though we may not hail them as war heroes.  
Beyond the foregoing, the main lesson from the Ebola affair now is the need to launch with immediate effect a complete makeover of the nation’s health care system from the tertiary to the primary levels. This contention is not a new gospel invented by this author, but has remained a popular chant by not a few commentators. From the academia to medical practitioners, public opinion leaders, traditional rulers and even beer parlour patrons, the message has been the same: give us better health facilities.
The fear rather is that in spite of Ebola, or whenever its cure becomes common place, matters will recede to business as usual, until (God forbid) another terror of a disease, even more vicious than Ebola, comes calling.
A pointer to this fear is the present complement of responses to the challenge which has so far featured so much noise with little action in comparison with the scope of the plague.  Granted that a major step in tackling Ebola is the practice of quarantine of likely or proven patients, the pace of establishing such lock down centres across the country is admissibly slower than expected. It is not unlikely that the authorities are operating on the reactionary principle of ‘locate and pin-down’, in which case selective siting of quarantine centres becomes defined.  
The weakness in that approach is self-manifest as it discounts the possible spread of the disease, even in a likely benign mode and in real-time carriers of the virus, across the country. Worrying as this may look, there are many factors that make the scenario difficult to ignore. One of such is the fact that all parts of Nigeria are destinations of choice for nationals of the Ebola infested nations in the West African sub region.  Hence, while a dragnet may be launched for Lagos and Abuja, what of other cities, towns and villages in the country? What of the city elite who visit the villages for homecoming or political campaigns that are now in season?
Besides, the Naira serves as regional currency and enjoys daily contact with both known and unknown carriers of Ebola in the sub-region, who use it for sundry purposes in shrines, morgues, mosques and churches including spraying at parties. Even if the virus may be proven to be dead or inactive in a state of dryness, the risk factor in our currency notes spreading it cannot be discounted. That why all of us are at risk, and the efforts by the authorities to deal with it, should be all encompassing.
By the way, this is to commend Africa’s richest man and philanthropist extraordinary, Aliko Dangote whose business empire recently donate as princely sum of N150 million for setting up an Ebola treatment centre in Lagos. Who’s next please?