Ebola in a Stew of Fear (New Eng Jour Med)

[pinto]

Very good read, imo. ~ pinto

Ebola in a Stew of Fear

Gregg Mitman, Ph.D.
September 17, 2014

“Bush meat?” I asked. The food in front of me smelled delicious, but the mention of bush meat in the stew evoked a twinge of fear. Could it be fruit bat? Chimpanzee? Both can harbor Ebola virus.

Our four-member team had just filmed a documentary in a remote rural village near the Guinea border. Shaded by the thatched roof of an open-air rice kitchen, we were sitting down to share a communal meal. Awaiting us was a tempting Liberian stew of cassava, pepper — and bush meat.

My hosts smiled. Even here, an hour's trek from the nearest road, and a 2-day drive from the capital city of Monrovia, news of the Ebola outbreak hung in the air. “Don't worry,” they assured me. No fruit bat. No chimpanzee. I hesitated a moment longer, but I didn't want to seem mistrustful. So I dipped my spoon into the pot and savored the spicy flavors.

The journey to Liberia in June had been uncertain. The international media had been mostly quiet about the slow burn of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia and neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone in early March, when I began planning the trip. But I soon started following reports of Ebola cases through personal contacts and Liberian news sources. In late May, as I was preparing to leave, information in the Western press and on government websites was still spotty.

<snip>

But the fear surrounding the virus has its own ecology that needs to be understood as well. What writer Mike Davis calls “the ecology of fear” is different in the country than in the city. It varies with cultural traditions and religious beliefs. Rich people experience it differently from poor people. And it changes over time. Western attitudes associating equatorial Africa with deadly diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and Ebola abound. And the fear displayed toward doctors and nurses in affected areas is more than the product of ignorance and superstition. Such fears also reflect the scars and painful memories of past medical encounters in West Africa.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1411244?query=health-policy-and-reform

[locks]

1. Excellent article, thanks

Though I follow this carefully there hasn't much written about fear of the virus and how it affects the whole world. I remember well how misinformed and frightened people were of AIDS. And also how psychologically traumatized the child soldiers were after the terrible civil wars. Now we have the sad, sad results of ebola that the family members of a dying patient cannot comfort each other or mourn their loved one in the ways they have in the past. Worst of all the orphaned children have no one to hold them or wipe away their tears. How will they ever grow up in this ecology of fear surrounding them?

I have the watched the true miracle of the Lost Boys and Girls from Sudan overcome a childhood we can't imagine. I hope and pray we will find a way to support and care for these children in West Africa.