written by Stephan Grabner
This past summer, as Ebola spread through parts of West Africa, I was working for a tech start-up in Ghana. Although the disease hadn’t been confirmed in Ghana, I – and certainly my advisors at UNC– kept a close eye on the development. Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever first spread to humans in the 1970s and has since killed thousands in periodic outbreaks. There is currently no known cure for the virus, which is transmitted via bodily fluids and has a fatality rate of roughly 50% in the case of the present epidemic.
Once it was clear that the outbreak was not under control but spreading rapidly, West African governments scrambled to put together a response while the rest of the world took a wait-and-see approach. Meetings were held, support was promised, and some supplies were sent to the affected countries. After several hundred Guineans, Liberians and Sierra Leoneans had died, two things happened. First, news spread that a potential drug for Ebola, Zmapp, was being tested and was available in very limited supply. Secondly, several foreigners who had been working in hospitals and Ebola clinics became infected.
Two American aid workers were flown out to be treated in US hospitals, and European countries likewise airlifted infected citizens out of the disaster zone. The first two Americans and two Spaniards to contract Ebola were treated with Zmapp, with generally positive results. At this point, two quite different objections were raised. Some West Africans wondered why only foreigners were flown to European and US hospitals, where more resources were available to care for infected medical personnel. They also wondered why the use of Zmapp was similarly restricted to foreigners while local doctors were dying of the disease.
Sierra Leone’s top Ebola expert, Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, died of Ebola while negotiations were underway whether or not he could be evacuated to Europe. He also did not receive Zmapp despite the fact that the drug was available. Several more doctors followed him after the WHO denied requests to transfer infected local medical staff to foreign clinics, but instead vowed to give them the best care possible- locally. As the epidemic worsened, affected countries lost their most capable doctors and nurses while aid organizations evacuated their foreign staff.
Simultaneously, US media personalities such as Donald Trump and Ann Coulter chimed in, saying that US aid workers who were infected should not be brought to the US for treatment but should “suffer the consequences” of going to such “disease-ridden cesspools”. Bringing infected individuals to the US doesn’t exactly help to contain the disease, they claimed.
On the face of it, the wish to keep those who carry such a highly contagious disease out of the country seems to have some merit. After all, shouldn’t our primary concern be to minimize the spread of the virus to other parts of the world? But there are many good reasons why the US and Europe should take every possible step to halt the spread of the disease as soon as possible, even if that includes airlifting Western- and African- medical staff to US or European hospitals for treatment. One is that it is much easier to contain a local outbreak than it is to respond to a pandemic. But one may also think that we have a moral obligation to help other nations facing a threat as serious as Ebola, or at least those Americans who risk their lives serving abroad.
The case of using experimental drugs is more complicated. It was decided not to give Zmapp to Dr. Kahn because of the already strong distrust of health workers and foreign aid organizations among parts of the local (rural) population. Many villagers believed that health care workers had spread the disease to their communities, and outreach teams of the ministry of health were threatened and even killed. If Dr. Kahn died after receiving Zmapp, it was feared, people might consider it further proof that it was foreigners and their local accomplices who spread the virus. One can imagine the headlines had these first trials on humans been unsuccessful: “African top doctors die after being used as guinea pigs by US pharma industry.” The manufacturer of Zmapp soon released all its reserves of the drug to the affected countries, which promptly exhausted the supply trying to save their Ebola experts.
I left Ghana a day after 7 suspected cases of Ebola were reported in various parts of the country (all ultimately tested negative). At the time of writing, over 5,300 people have been infected with Ebola, with 50% of the infections reported in the past three weeks alone. As the epidemic continues to grow exponentially, there are many reasons to fight it: economic, political, and certainly moral ones.
Two American aid workers were flown out to be treated in US hospitals, and European countries likewise airlifted infected citizens out of the disaster zone. The first two Americans and two Spaniards to contract Ebola were treated with Zmapp, with generally positive results. At this point, two quite different objections were raised. Some West Africans wondered why only foreigners were flown to European and US hospitals, where more resources were available to care for infected medical personnel. They also wondered why the use of Zmapp was similarly restricted to foreigners while local doctors were dying of the disease.
Sierra Leone’s top Ebola expert, Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, died of Ebola while negotiations were underway whether or not he could be evacuated to Europe. He also did not receive Zmapp despite the fact that the drug was available. Several more doctors followed him after the WHO denied requests to transfer infected local medical staff to foreign clinics, but instead vowed to give them the best care possible- locally. As the epidemic worsened, affected countries lost their most capable doctors and nurses while aid organizations evacuated their foreign staff.
Simultaneously, US media personalities such as Donald Trump and Ann Coulter chimed in, saying that US aid workers who were infected should not be brought to the US for treatment but should “suffer the consequences” of going to such “disease-ridden cesspools”. Bringing infected individuals to the US doesn’t exactly help to contain the disease, they claimed.
On the face of it, the wish to keep those who carry such a highly contagious disease out of the country seems to have some merit. After all, shouldn’t our primary concern be to minimize the spread of the virus to other parts of the world? But there are many good reasons why the US and Europe should take every possible step to halt the spread of the disease as soon as possible, even if that includes airlifting Western- and African- medical staff to US or European hospitals for treatment. One is that it is much easier to contain a local outbreak than it is to respond to a pandemic. But one may also think that we have a moral obligation to help other nations facing a threat as serious as Ebola, or at least those Americans who risk their lives serving abroad.
The case of using experimental drugs is more complicated. It was decided not to give Zmapp to Dr. Kahn because of the already strong distrust of health workers and foreign aid organizations among parts of the local (rural) population. Many villagers believed that health care workers had spread the disease to their communities, and outreach teams of the ministry of health were threatened and even killed. If Dr. Kahn died after receiving Zmapp, it was feared, people might consider it further proof that it was foreigners and their local accomplices who spread the virus. One can imagine the headlines had these first trials on humans been unsuccessful: “African top doctors die after being used as guinea pigs by US pharma industry.” The manufacturer of Zmapp soon released all its reserves of the drug to the affected countries, which promptly exhausted the supply trying to save their Ebola experts.
I left Ghana a day after 7 suspected cases of Ebola were reported in various parts of the country (all ultimately tested negative). At the time of writing, over 5,300 people have been infected with Ebola, with 50% of the infections reported in the past three weeks alone. As the epidemic continues to grow exponentially, there are many reasons to fight it: economic, political, and certainly moral ones.