Patrick Sawyer’s ominous gift

Salutations no longer take the form of a firm handshake between men or the convivial embrace between females, as a way of saying good to see you my brother or sister. No more the high fives or bone -cracking embrace you normally see among sports men and women.All that have been replaced by a mere […]

Salutations no longer take the form of a firm handshake between men or the convivial embrace between females, as a way of saying good to see you my brother or sister. No more the high fives or bone -cracking embrace you normally see among sports men and women.
All that have been replaced by a mere tepid fists touch or shaking of one’s bottom, so fleeting you would wonder why they bother to acknowledge the presence of one another at all. These novel ways of greeting have been forced on us in the wake of the outbreak of Ebola which at the last count has arisen to 198; 177 of them quarantined in Lagos, and 23 in Enugu.
The virus would still have been limited to Lagos but a nurse who participated in the care of Patrick Sawyer ignored firm orders not to go outside Lagos. She went to Enugu and dragged other 23 people into the Ebola net, just like Patrick Sawyer did when he decided to come to Nigeria after having been put under investigation.
Why Patrick Sawyer, who had caught the disease from his dead sister and told by the Liberian authorities not to venture anywhere without permission, boarded a plane to Nigeria would continue to agitate minds until the disease abates. The fact that he was in Liberia at the behest of its government indicates that he  was an educated man with some useful expertise and therefore must have known that he has come in contact with a virulent ailment and indeed was told so in no uncertain terms. Yet he still stole himself into Nigeria, causing an exasperated President Goodluck Jonathan to call him a “madman”, a clearly un-presidential outburst, excusable only on account of the reason it was made. Other people have labelled him a “biological terrorist”.
President Ellen Johnson –Sirleef of Liberia herself had cause to use similar expletives to describe Sawyer’s strange attitude.
According to the Health Minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, Nigeria had been Ebola free until that fateful July 20th day when the Liberian-American landed in Nigeria and had to be taken to hospital and caused the dreaded disease to get a foot- hold on our soil. So, why did Patrick Sawyer do what he did, knowing full well what he was carrying in his body?  Was his intention one of taking as many people as possible with him to his death? We would never know. But in the heyday of HIV and AIDS, there were accounts of people who having been certified to be carrying the disease proceeded to deliberately spread the virus through reckless and indiscriminate sexual intercourse with unsuspecting people. In their warped minds such people rather than hold themselves responsible for their promiscuity, proceeded to blame their affliction on society. Is Sawyer of such mindset and if so why pick on Nigeria?  Was his behaviour a variant of the now common practice where individuals in US who out of sinc with reality get hold of guns and proceed to rain bullets on anyone that comes their way?
 Anyway, it must be asked that why did it have to take the depravity of Sawyer,  the shock that he could flout specific health instructions bordering on life and death for the Nigerian authorities to wake up to the need to contain the spread of Ebola? After all, the virus was isolated sometime in March, which was time enough to have put in place measures capable of dealing with characters like Sawyer.
Certainly there are so many imponderables begging for answers. The least being the comment of Mrs Sawyer, the widow of the dead man, who angered by the bitterness shown to her husband, claimed that Patrick Sawyer’s Nigeria’s itinerary was motivated by nothing more than the blind quest to preserve his life, which as she argued Liberia with its “broken” health care system cannot guarantee.
 According to her, the husband must have thought that if he could get to Nigeria, a country with a relatively better health care system, perhaps he could get succour.
 This is charitable sentiment to express about the health care system of Nigeria which would be music in the ears of Nigerians themselves.
Yet one cannot help to conclude that Mrs Sawyer was merely playing the role of a dutiful wife doing her best to stand by her deceased husband in his wrong- headed decision to seek succour in Nigeria. Surely, considering the vast difference in endowments between the two countries, Nigeria’s health care delivery system must be far better than Liberia’s which, it must be said, must have been ruined during the wars years it went through. But it should not be forgotten that at the time all this was happening there had been a subsisting doctors’ strike that paralysed health care delivery in Nigeria. The strike was recently suspended when Ebola surfaced in Nigeria through the active agency of Sawyer.
Talking of efficient health care delivery, the best destination for Sawyer should have been his home country-the US, where doctors who had contacted the virus in Liberia were taken and are now doing well. So, the least that can be said about Mrs Sawyer’s comment is that it is fatuous and an afterthought. As for her husband, if he had wanted to live he should have sought permission to be flown back to the US where he was sure to get exquisite treatment.
 It is therefore difficult not to surmise that his choice of Nigeria for treatment was motivated by something beyond self-preservation; and it cannot be darker and more sinister than what he has achieved by making Nigeria an Ebola country.
The government has done well by swinging into action as soon as Patrick Sawyer was confirmed to have been killed by Ebola. The minister of health, Onyebuchi Chukwu and his team has continued to track anyone with the slightest chance of coming into contact with Patrick Sawyer or any secondary source for observation and treatment—a logistical nightmare, if ever there was one- as well as putting out information on sensitisation of the public. Even so, out of indiscipline of a nurse, Enugu is also at risk, indicating the uphill task before the Onyebuchi team in its bid to stop the spread of the virus in its tracks.
 The government, particularly the health ministry and ancillary bodies were not  proactive enough to foresee and forestall a situation into which Patrick Sawyer has landed Nigeria.  The first case of Ebola outbreak was reported in March, but no concrete measure was taken to ensure no one with the virus sneaked into Nigeria with the disease.
The frenetic safety measures being taken now should have commenced way back in March or April when mortality began to mount in those countries.
On the drug for treatment, this is the time to come out with a home–grown one, uniquely  our own. There should be some efficacious decoctions among the flora and fauna that abound in the country. Not only should every claim of  the babalawos,  herbal medicine claimants and others be verified but also all the multiplicity of pharmaceutical companies and slumbering research bodies should be charged with producing some elixir to defeat this disease.