Transcript Slide 1

Q&A with Babar Turay,
Koidu city, Sierra Leone
•
Koidu city: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DHLXm6VStM
1) Lots is being said about international organizations and governments are doing,
but are local civil society organizations and communities also doing things?
•
Yes in addition to donations made by international organizations and Government to
address the Ebola crisis, local/community people have organized themselves into
neighborhood watch and youth groups to surveillance the movement of people
especially strangers in their communities by setting up 24hours checkpoints, sick people
in the communities, burials, tracing of contacts especially of suspected persons and
provision of information to authorities in a timely manner. Also while quarantine
relatives in communities are assisted with food, communities have been the first groups
to task themselves in providing food for their sick relatives before any outside help. In
addition the preparation of community byelaws and the strict enforcement laws such as
the non-accommodation of strangers without prior information to authorities, prompt
report of sick cases to the community Ebola Task Force, the setting up of community
temporary quarantine centers etc and the heavy fines levied on defaulters is the key
reason for the drastic reduction of new infections in some communities like Kailahun
today.
2) How is the government, and health authorities, addressing the cultural
dimensions of the crisis, including the issue of traditional burials?
• The cultural dimension has been the most difficult part to handle in
this crisis. The fact that research has proven that 70% or more of
the transmission route has been associated to burials clearly
indicates that if cultural practices are controlled today there will be
a drastic reduction in the rate of transmission. However the heavy
handedness of Government and health authorities on cultural
practices without proper education of remote areas and even some
urban settings on the virus and its mode of transmission were
responsible for the many denials and escalated spread of the
disease in the country. It is believed that Liberia the worst hit has
been able to contain the crisis because of the total control of
cultural practices relating to burials.
3) Is aid for Ebola being diverted, and if so to what purposes?
• These are information that are difficult to verify since the channels
used by aid agencies and bi-lateral donors to assist the country are
normally not clear to the public. What is clear though is that the
tune of money and other assistance made by donors for the fight
against the disease is less reflected on the ground especially in
terms of support to sick persons, quarantine homes, less
transparent distribution of items, some government and agency
workers caught with food supplies meant for quarantine homes, the
persistent decline in the quantity of money and food given to
affected persons and homes. These are clear reasons to leave a lot
of doubts on the minds of local people in the handling of the crisis
by the powers that be.
4) Is the crisis having an effect on crime?
• Crimes in terms of some people blatantly challenging some
authorities as a way of venting out their anger on the handling of
the crisis yes, otherwise crime rate is seriously reduced or hardly
heard about. However the usual domestic violence crimes, sexual
harassment and rape cases, thieving, drug taking especially
marijuana are still very high in the country but these can be hardly
associated to the ebola crisis.
• It will be difficult to convince anyone that his/her sick mother at 80
who has been hypertensive for over ten years can suddenly be
declared as ebola positive alone among the rest of her family.
5) Is the government been blamed, or praised for what is happening?
• The Government is being blamed by a greater majority
of the citizenry of this country. In the first instance
people believe that it was the ineptitude of
government in putting the right mechanism in place
especially along our borders with Guinea and Liberia
that allowed the virus to slowly take Kailahum district
three months after the news of the outbreak of the
disease in neighboring Guinea. What Ivory Coast and
others in the sub-region did we fail to do so here we
are.
5) Is the government been blamed, or praised for what is happening?
•
Also the slow response of government to the crisis even when it was in Kailahun
and the use of political gimmicks that this was not the strong hold of the APC
government was a total failure of the people in this country. Up to date no one
dare to ask questions on the handling of the crisis or else you are branded to be
making remarks that have the potential to destabilize the state and the ‘State of
Emergency’ will be used to imprison you without due process . The popular radio
presenter in the country Tam Bayoh was only last week release on a 50million
Leones bail sortie for the same reason. Remember when many people are going
hungry and dying and only few living healthy and in luxury, rumors will set in and
the outcome will be resentment and anger against the few that are living well, in
this case government officials and their relatives.
Documentary
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-flBixnCSo
Q& A with Babar Turay and the
militarization of Ebola response
“ 'A fight for national survival': Royal Navy ship sails to fight
'total war' against Ebola ” Sunday Express, 30 Oct 2014
Militarization…
• ‘From a military perspective Ebola is like a
biological warfare attack and should be
countered accordingly. There needs to be a
clampdown on human movement inside Sierra
Leone and possibly to and from the country
between now and late 2015 when it is hoped
that an antidote will have been developed.’
US military
Derek Gregory
on the militarization of the Ebola crisis
We’ve been here before – ‘wars’ on this and ‘wars’ on that. It’s strange how
reluctant states are to admit that their use of military violence (especially when it
doesn’t involve ‘boots on the ground‘) isn’t really war at all – ‘overseas
contingency operations’ is what the Pentagon once preferred, but I’ve lost count
of how many linguistic somersaults they’ve performed since then to camouflage
their campaigns – and yet how eager they are to declare everything else a war.
These tricks are double-edged. While advanced militaries and their paymasters
go to extraordinary linguistic lengths to mask the effects of their work, medical
scientists have been busily appropriating the metaphorical terrain from which
modern armies are in embarrassed retreat. Yet all metaphors take us somewhere
before they break down, and the ‘war on Ebola’ takes us more or less directly to
the militarisation of the global response.
http://geographicalimaginations.com/2014/10/25/the-war-on-ebola/
Parallels made between
the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘war on Ebola’
“The differences between the two “wars” may seem too obvious to belabor, since
Ebola is a disease with a medical etiology and scientific remedies, while ISIS is a
sentient enemy. Nevertheless, Ebola does seem to mimic some of the characteristics
experts long ago assigned to al-Qaeda and its various wannabe and successor outfits.
It lurks in the shadows until it strikes. It threatens the safety of civilians across the
United States. Its root causes lie in the poverty and squalor of distant countries. Its
spread must be stopped at its region of origin — in this case, Guinea, Liberia, and
Sierra Leone in West Africa — just as both the Bush and Obama administrations were
convinced that the fight against al-Qaeda had to be taken militarily to the backlands of
the planet from Pakistan’s tribal borderlands to Yemen’s rural areas.”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175910/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg,_will_the_u.s._go_to_%22
war%22_against_ebola/
Conspiracy theories
“We were told the US troops going to Liberia would be building hospitals and would
not have contact with Ebola patients. A mother of one of those soldiers has called
into Aaron Klien's radio show (report below) to say that the troops are instead being
used as hospital orderlies to clean up the feces and vomit of dying Ebola patients.
Her son managed a call out of Liberia in spite of a communication blackout that has
been imposed on the troops. This report adds to the emerging preponderance of
evidence that a plan is surely in place to spread Ebola throughout the US Military and
of course, the American population. An additional red flag pointing to this reality is
the decision to quarantine the returning troops at five different military installations.
Multiple quarantine locations makes no sense and the communication blackout
imposed on the troops speaks volumes about the true motive of the operation.”
‘Ebola Bulletin’ - no identification but circulated through emails
Misinformation
“A woman who died of an apparent heart attack at a New York City
hair salon on Tuesday will be tested for the Ebola virus out of “an
abundance of caution” because she had recently been in West
Africa, city health officials said.” New York Times, 18 Nov 2014
“The woman who just dropped dead in New York from Ebola
substantiates the dire warnings infectious disease expert Michael
Osterholm recently shared at an Ebola symposium. Please read this
entire email very closely. Ebola is about to go viral in America. There
have been major coverups and a campaign of disinformation that
has put people off of guard.” Ebola-related email, 18 Nov 2014
=> Tests came back negative, Mail online 19 Nov 2014
Politicization…
In the context of mid-term congressional
elections in the US, the Ebola crisis figure
prominently in ads by candidates
• http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/10/31/e
bola-becomes-a-big-issue-in-this-senate-race/
Critiques of militarized approaches
“This is worryingly authoritarian, bad for public health, and
strategically counterproductive. Despite its impressive
logistics, the army makes only a marginal contribution to
international disaster relief — and often makes things
worse. Nor do soldiers “fight” pathogens — and the
language of warfare risks turning infected people and their
caretakers into objects of fear and stigma.”
Alex de Waal
“Best practices in global health include efforts to be sensitive to
national histories and cultures and to overcome the suspicions
induced by outside health programs. Medicine in khaki is not
only inefficient, it is bad practice. British, French, and American
armies have a history of imposing control in the name of
hygiene, cordoning off a city or as-yet-insufficiently governed
parts of the global borderlands…. In much of Africa, public health
has struggled to free itself from the way it was implicated in
coercive colonial control measures.”
Alex de Waal
“We are soldiers and we are willing to come here,” said Jielie Zhang, a nurse from Beijing. She is part of a delegation sent by the Chinese
government to aid in caring for victims of the Ebola virus. She and her colleagues give patients small stuffed panda bears that they brought
with them from China. Glenna Gordon for The Wall Street Journal
Fund raising event by SFU students
When: Monday, December 1, 2014, 7pm to 10pm.
Where: the HiVE, #210-128 West Hastings Street, Vancouver.
What: an evening reception with live music, drinks, appetizers, a silent auction, MSF
speaker, and general merry-making in support of a very good cause.
Who: everyone is welcome to this fundraising event organized by a volunteer committee of
students and faculty from SFU's School for International Studies.
How: tickets are $25 with $20 directly donated to MSF; each ticket gains entrance, one free
drink, and appetizers; a cash bar will also be on site.
Tickets can be purchased at: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/from-here-to-the-front-linestickets-14334032477
For more information, please see the attached poster or the event's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/797143540349559/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
or contact Elizabeth Cooper at [email protected]
Sources
• Leach, M., I. Scoones, A. Stirling (2010) Governing epidemics in an
age of complexity: Narratives, politics and pathways to
sustainability. Global Environmental Change.
• http://geographicalimaginations.com/2014/10/25/the-war-onebola/
• http://geographicalimaginations.com/2014/11/15/fighting-ebola/
• http://specularimage.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/ebola-pastpresent-liminal-working/
• Farmer, Paul Infections and Inequalities 1999 University of
California Press
• Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative Par
Priscilla Wald
• http://ghi.wisc.edu/ghi-in-action/tackling-ebola-on-many-fronts/
Documentaries
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTF7i6OBGQ
k
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v2Er6HuufA
Short BBC on situation in village of Kigbal, SL
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-flBix-nCSo
Longer BBC on situation in Freetown