Ebola a warning to East Africa on threat of neglected diseases
Health officials screening travellers for Ebola in Namanga on the Tanzania-Kenya border on September 24, 2014. EAC must support scientists to pay more attention to neglected diseases. PHOTO | JENNIFER MUIRURI |
Last year a picture of Pope Francis hugging a severely disfigured man generated lots of online admiration and was listed among the top 100 iconic photos of the year in some forums.
Though the illness was not contagious, this symbolic gesture shows man’s rare quality and strength: inability to see suffering in others without being touched.
Perhaps this is the reason we sometimes disregard personal safety when we see others in danger. Thus, strangers jump into burning houses, dive into waters to attempt rescue, among other steps.
All this is said to prelude the ongoing Ebola outbreak debate and in particular the furore in sections of the American online community over “importation” of the disease to the US. In the latest case, the patient allegedly contracted it while helping a sick pregnant woman to hospital.
The fact is that nobody wants to get Ebola. Most, if not all, of those infected were in some way attending to sick people a human reflex. Putting others at risk is the suggested crime for this patient.
Quantifying the economic losses of the current outbreak from containment costs, loss of lives, economic productivity and the market panic will reach a staggering amount when the calculators stop counting. Already its effects are reverberating in the global tourism, industry and African trade in general.
A key question is why relevant authorities and governments have not invested adequate resources over the years to tackle the problem.
The response from governments, both African and external, has been reactionary perhaps because of the small scale of past eruptions.
Some spheres of thought allude to a “bias” in efforts and resource allocation for this and similar diseases because of their geographical domicile. Regardless of that, regional trading block EAC has discounted the potential economic destabilisation threats Ebola poses.
The reality today is that our world is a highly mobile one. In three days one can be in four continents. It is also interconnected. Movement of goods and people is far much easier and quicker than it was three decades ago.
Discovering cure
To emphasise the potential threat, try visualising a map showing all daily flights, ships, trains and vehicles crossing international boundaries.
On any particular day, enforcing an “international lock down” would be impossible. Collectively, the money lost by lockdowns may be more than could spur the finding of a cure or vaccine.
It could be cheaper for the world to mobilise resources to have one big push to find remedies. Discovery of cures is, however, an expensive affair. Recent patients’ complaint on the high cost of a new Hepatitis C drug is an example.
Without support, scientists and pharmaceuticals will not invest time in such initiatives.
Kenya’s gesture to send an equivalent of a million dollars to affected nations as aid was a good move but a drop in the ocean. As the regional trade king we stand to lose more. How we seek to finance solutions for not just Ebola but many other “neglected” diseases is the hot debate.
Amref’s conference for African health stakeholders in November on Research in Healthcare, Neglected Diseases and Funding should be a good forum to open this discussion.
