Ebola, a year on!!

Have you ever lived in a village where bats are in abundance? Perhaps you would cast your mind to around 37 Military Hospital?that is if you have ever been to Accra –where bats go for treatment. Or what do they do in and around the hospital? Don’t assume those bats have been quarantined by fate.
I have also lived in a village where God or my landlord (I don’t know which of them) built a zoo of bats over my ceiling. These bats run amok everywhere in the village and it seemed to me they are the primary owners of the village, Kaira. Sometimes in the classrooms while teaching and learning is going on, these colony of bats intrude classrooms, with their sounds serving as ice breakers or musical interlude, if you will.
Fruit-eating bats are in many places across the country and the mere sight of them speaks volumes about Ghana’s preparation against the Ebola epidemic, if indeed, the virus is spread by these animals elsewhere.
Many Africans, including some humanitarian experts, criticised the international community’s slow response to the fight against the ever- ravaging virus. But truth be told, little has been done by ourselves, notwithstanding the contribution made by the African Union. Ghana, for instance, has done very little and should the virus show up, it would destroy us as “the Lord struck all the firstborns in the land of Egypt at midnight.” And one wonders whether the power crises would not double the infection of the disease, should the virus sneak into Accra ,seeing how ineffective our hospitals become when lights go out.
Our Ebola treatment centres were not completed early enough and sadly, not many. Our neighbours to the west, Ivory Coast, were reported to have gone beyond setting up Ebola treatment centres and employed mass spraying exercise to ward off these bats from their borders, many of which strayed into the western region of Ghana. If a disease could infect over 2300 and kill over 9000 within a few months , why wouldn’t a government do everything conceivable to keep it a distant story, but would watch these fruit-eating bats cohabit with humans, some of which are patients with weak immune systems (in the case of 37 Military hospital)?
Meanwhile, there is another side of the Ebola story; some people believe the Ebola virus was cooked in a Western “pot” as a biological weapon. It was alleged that the virus was created by the U.S military in collaboration with some International pharmaceutical companies. The leader of The Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, Professor Cyril Broderick, a professor at the Delaware University, Chris Brown the “With You” singer, Archbishop Palmer Buckle were among prominent leaders who voiced this allegation. And looking at the Machiavellianism in Western and Eastern Blocs of world politics and also in many business people, any clearheaded person cannot rubbish the above claim. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Anthrax attacks have not been erased from the archives of world history.
The aforementioned men of courage aired their views on “population control” in the hope that the media would talk about the issue.
However, that was not to be. Both international and local media, together with Civil Society Organisations(CSOs) prefer weightier matters; like talking about the sins of Putin but ignoring the thousands of innocent Black Africans who are dying (probably) by the wickedness or negligence of some scientists. Or, discussing the sins of African governments while seeing nothing wrong with the evil meted out on Africans by these western governments and their cohorts. To them, every policy and product from the West is the best, so they( the media and CSOs) failed to discuss the issue extensively.
AFRICA’S STRIDES
I cringe when I see Africa portrayed as a place estranged by Ebola. But the world has not left Africa too far behind in terms of health care services. At least this was evident in how some of the Ebola affected countries handled their cases. Nigeria proved it is really the Big Brother when it announced that it had rid the virus off its borders. By mid-January 2015, Mali has also come out that the country was now free of the virus. Senegal also gave a commendable response when imported cases were reported in that country. And just last week, Liberia, which was torn apart by the disease came out that it has released its last patient, down from a height of 500 cases per week in September. Also, encouraging is news from Sierra Leone and Guinea where cases of infection are receding.
Even though cases of infection are receding, the harm inflicted on people in the affected countries remains, and the compounded grief it leaves should not be overlooked. When the disease is totally wiped out of the sub-region, the media, especially, the international ones should educate the world extensively that West Africa is free of Ebola. Social media, campaigns such as “I am an African, not Ebola” should be intensified and other “hashtags” developed to that effect.
In conclusion, one year of panic and destruction caused by Ebola cannot be swept under the carpet seeing the traumatic prints it leaves in the files of Africa’s history. As a result, all efforts to trace all persons who came in contact with infected persons must be conclusive in order to nip any possible resurgence in the bud. I also urge African governments, to build robust health care systems to deal with future medical emergencies and epidemics.