Massive International Response to clear the Ebola Bottleneck
The “bottleneck” in the Ebola War is the lack of adequate laboratories – as people who die have to wait a couple of days before the laboratories can determine and report to their relatives that they had Ebola or would be Ebola free. The President said the British team that has arrived would help to mitigate this problem.
We have to cry, sing, hold demonstrations such as that being vanguard-ed by Sierra Leonean citizen in the US, Amadu Massally: every second counts for us to get adequate laboratories for the Ebola War. We must not take no for an answer from the rest of the world. All the churches and mosques, and civil society groups with connections in the West and Asia, should bond together so that we get all possible resources for the war against the Ebola within days.
Hope was expressed by the President that the 300 beds in the treatment centers in Kailahun, Kenema, and Freetown would be increased to 600 by the end of November – which still falls short of the 1,500 beds the country needs for Ebola patients.
The “responsibility” for ending the Ebola pandemic would lay not with the large number of international people who are in the country (US, UK, Nigerians, Cubans, EU, AU, etc), but, with the leaders showing leadership by “not compromising” with those who in spite of all the blizzard of “sensitization” still choose to do those things which would lead to transmission of the Ebola.
Bashing ‘The Lords of Poverty’
Like President Lansana Conde of Guinea did a couple of days ago during an interview with the BBC, President Koroma yesterday took a swipe at international organizations who appear to be benefiting from the Ebola Outbreak “riding their four-wheel jeeps”: “We need development and business people; not people in the Ebola Business”. President Koroma said that his government would insist in complete transparency and accountability in how international organizations are handling funds meant for the Ebola War.
What presidents Ernest Bai Koroma and Lansana Conde have lampooned the West for and their high-powered humanitarian agencies have been standard practice since the end of the Second World War. Governments in Europe and America would announce, for example, that they have donated “$50million” for a worthy cause (HIV/flood/ drought/ or Ebola) – but, about 60% of the $50,000,000 would be gobbled up by ‘experts’ from these countries as ‘administrative costs’, as fees they pay for living in luxury hotels. While we denounce these ‘foreign vultures’, the Ebola outbreak gives us another opportunity to look inward – to cleanse our governance systems; to ensure that in future, Africans are more dependent on their own internal intellectual and physical resources.
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