[October 03, 2014] The recent news that a citizen of Liberia West Africa carrying Ebola made it into the United States without being stopped and then discharged from a Texas hospital says much about the poor disease screening procedures worldwide. If the U.S. can’t get it right, how do we expect others with fewer resources to do better? Is the world leadership up to stopping the spread of Ebola? Are they are up to the task of helping control its spread across the globe and fighting it inside West Africa?
Two weeks ago I wrote about the medical ethics of laws restricting the movement of people across country borders and the government’s heavy-hand that could quarantine people to their homes, prohibit travel, and outlaw behavior that allowed body fluid contact (see link). Hard decisions would have to be made and some of these will go against our concept of personal freedoms. Restricting freedom is required to control the disease but that also goes against what Westerners strongly believe in. How to sort out this contradiction is what will test the West’s leadership.
To date many nations have taken small and easy steps of sending medical supplies and, in some cases, military personnel. They will work with various West African governments and international agencies to help. This may be a controversial step for many but so far the leadership has not been stressed in this decision. It will not be long before nasty things begin to happen.
For example, it’s only a matter of time before the West is accused of manufacturing and distributing the disease to kill Africans. It is also probable that Western military personnel will contract the disease. How to explain these things to their citizens and communicate the urgency of outside assistance will not be easy. To do so and do it well will be the acme of good leadership.
There are two facets about the “world leadership” helping stop the Ebola disease that must be understood. First, in a true sense there is no world leadership that controls what happens inside nation states. The closest thing to providing leadership is the United Nations and it has consistently shown itself to be particularly inefficient and ineffective. That is unfortunate because in the case of Ebola, if projections hold, there will need to be good leadership at the UN. Some other nation may step up to take the leadership role. The U.S. has often done it but lately there is doubt about America’s will to take leadership responsibilities.
Second, for those non-African nations with the resources, their citizens may initially be enthusiastic but that will wane as their own casualties occur in the struggle to contain the disease. They will have to be convinced that they are a force of good. This is not as straightforward as it appears. The reason is that the Ebola fight to this point has been neither difficult nor dangerous.
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