Ebola, Testing Our Humanity

Our nation announces we will build hospitals in West Africa; the world applauds and ignores the fact that the plan is to NOT have Americans staff these clinics. Compassion on the world stage evidently extends only to the point where our self-interest as a nation would be put at some risk.

In the west,  a couple of Ebola cases fill the news, on the hour reports related to their condition and those they have infected focus our nation on “our country”. Missing in all this is the dozens who continue to die daily in West Africa.

As West Africa continues to sink deeper into chaos, half measures and promises are made to placate western sensibilities. On the ground, where the disaster is occurring, pleas are made for more funds, more equipment and more responders.  Governments and NGO’s are moribund by their “procedures” which were not designed to address the immediate needs of a medical disaster of this magnitude.

Our national system of Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) has not even been considered as an option for addressing this disaster.  Instead our government has sent the military, with guns and all,  to take up positions in a foreign nation.  Essentially, we have used this crisis as a pawn in the international geo political chess game with China in Africa.

My heart aches to be in Africa assisting, yet all attempts to get there have been dashed.  Evidently those who wish to respond with years of training are not needed.  Inside I weep as I consider the lives being needlessly lost.  Unable to put my compassion into action I am also lost.

Deep inside me in a private place, I wonder if the faces of those dying were white, would the response be the same? The conclusion I come to is shameful!