Unless care is taken, we may record more deaths from the fear of the disease than from the disease itself
Knowing our country very well, more people may eventually die from Ebolaphobia than the number that would be killed by the virus or the disease proper. So far, Ebola has killed seven people in the country. And, in just one week, at least three people had reportedly died because those who should have treated them or given them First Aid were scared stiff to go near them for fear that the patients might be having Ebola. It could not have been otherwise in a country where many people want to go to heaven but not many want to die.
The most prominent of these unfortunate casualties was the British diplomat who slumped and died on Tuesday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMA), Lagos, at about 3.00 p.m. The envoy, Peter Leslie Carter, the British Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, arrived aboard a United Airlines flight and died at the arrival hall shortly after disembarking from the plane.
A top security operative at the airport said “He was shouting, help! Help! And then slumped. People did not want to go near initially because of the Ebola scare that has been in town”. Although the airport authorities tried to give the impression that there was prompt response to the emergency, we all know the response might have come too late.
There is also the story of another victim of Ebolaphobia; that of an unnamed man who was taken to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Lagos, by health officials from the MMA. According to a doctor who was around when the man was brought to the hospital, “They rushed him to the Accident and Emergency Unit, and since he was vomiting and purging and he also had high fever, we quickly took his temperature, it was very high. We were all scared to take his blood sample because we were not wearing any Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)”. To cut a long story shut, the man eventually died. Here, it would be difficult to know where to lay the blame because the doctor was not specific as to whether the hospital did not provide the PPE or whether they had but were not putting it on. In Nigeria, the two are possibilities.
Then the third case, that of a woman that was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, and rushed to the Federal Medical Centre there. Rather than start treating her immediately, she was abandoned until she died the following morning. A senior hospital official was quoted as saying: “The victim was brought into the casualty ward by two Good Samaritans. She was reported to have been hit by a hit-and-run driver along the Sani Abacha Way in the Yenagoa metropolis. Instead of treating her due to the bruises and cuts in her body, the doctors refused, fearing it might be Ebola case. They refused even when the pictures of the scene of the accident were shown to them. The woman was brought into the casualty section by 2pm on Monday. She was abandoned and she died about 11a.m. on Tuesday. Even when the mortuary attendants were asked to take the body to the morgue by some doctors, they refused. They only took the body after the intervention of the Head of Administration. It is a shame.” It is indeed a shame, especially if the doctors had protective gears. The hospital has threatened to investigate the matter and punish the culprits; one can only hope that won’t be one of the usual empty threats common in the country.
Now, the Federal Government has reconsidered its earlier decision postponing resumption in our primary and secondary schools till October 13. Apparently this is due to the pressure by private schools’ proprietors who said the decision would impact negatively on their revenue. I appreciate this concern and in fact empathise with them, but I do not think the matter should be about money alone. Ebola, as we all know, is no respecter of person. The October 13 date was one of the best decisions taken by the government to curb Ebola and it should not be reversed simply for pecuniary gains. The other argument by the proprietors about disruption of school calendar is weak because, God forbids, an outbreak of Ebola in any such school would spell doom for the country. The loss would be far more colossal than whatever the school owners might lose now. So, anyone with the interest of our children at heart should not be making such demand because of the vulnerability of the children to the disease.
One of the proprietors’ points which I consider germane however is that despite the Ebola outbreak, the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), one of the campaign organs of President Goodluck Jonathan has unilaterally lifted the ban on political campaigns by holding rallies for the president despite the president’s reported non-sanctioning of such rallies! They have even been to Port Harcourt where Ebola cases have also been detected. This is bad enough. The school proprietors’ point is that since it is easy to be infected with the Ebola virus at such gatherings, the organisers ought to have shelved the campaigns until such a time when the risk would have been minimised or eliminated. The sad aspect is that if it had been the opposition parties that were involved in such rallies, the security agents would have swooped on them. But now that it is the president’s group, they are even protecting the organisers, including top govermment functionaries, at the rallies.
Nonetheless, we still have to be careful because two wrongs will never make a right; indeed not even a million wrongs would. When the government postponed schools’ resumption, things were not as serious as they are today concerning Ebola. We have recorded fresh cases in a few other places. So, rather than start reconsidering whether to allow innocent pupils resume when we are still unsure of the state of Ebola in the country just for political or pecuniary expediency, or both,, the school owners should have insisted that government fulfilled its promises to the schools before the earlier October resumption date was fixed.
It is clear though that it is guilty conscience, rather than any rational reasoning that is behind the decision to change the date again to September 22., which is regrettable. What we would have on our hands would not be a child’s play should a few pupils contract the Ebola virus. As for the adults, they can still find a way round it because many of them are sufficiently aware of what the disease entails. This is my assumption, though. Our school proprietors should not have behaved like Dr. Iyke Enemuo, who, for the sake of money agreed to treat an Ebola patient in secret. Today, he is no more. He did not even have the privilege of living to regret that decision. I am sure we do not want such fate to befall our children.
In the same vein, the proprietors should not behave like the government and its agencies that do not care whether people catch Ebola at their campaign rallies, provided the rallies are in support of the president. This is only one of the many crude impunities of the Jonathan administration. For me, a president that has been in power for about six years should have his works speaking for him by now; he sure does not need any wild campaigns to remind Nigerians about what he has done for them so far. As the saying goes, a king does not have to remind his subjects that he is still their king; when that happens, it is an indication that there is a problem.
My point is that we should not all be held hostage to the anything-goes politics of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that is ready to do anything to retain its non-performing government. The only regret in this matter is the state governments that also fell for such cheap political popularity. We should do everything to keep our children out of harm’s way so that they do not add to the numbers of the other Ebola victims that we have already recorded. The PDP can play politics with anything and everything, and grant concession no matter how unreasonable such might be provided it sees some political votes from the decision, but we should please leave our children out of this. They are our future; our hope. Don’t let’s eat up their tomorrow today on the altar of crass and primitive politics.
