Did you ever ask why armed men attacked the Liberia Ebola Clinic in 2014 and chased away 29 infected patients ?
This was in 2014, at the peak of the Ebola crisis! You should be curious because to most people attacking and chasing away 29 patients with confirmed Ebola sounds really crazy, like eerie crazy.
Ebola kills, everybody knows that especially the people of Liberia. They have been hit the most by the epidemic. Nations far and near have sent in aid to help this poor nation who recently just survived a terrible civil war.
The international community in their effort to curb and treat the infection had set up an Ebola clinic in West Point without consulting with the locals. The residents were also ignorant of what Ebola really was and the “powers that be” failed to educate them. Perhaps because the 50,000 strong residents of West Point were poor and uneducated? Up until that moment, what people knew about Ebola was from ‘street talk’ and they believed it especially because it agreed with their cultural and religious beliefs. If you see things from their point of view, attacking the Ebola clinic was the right thing to do.
So what was the cause of Ebola according to the residents of West Point, Liberia?
A virus? You must be joking! You are not even close.
Ebola is caused by witchcraft!
The story is that a woman from a nearby village went on a trip and left a parcel at home which she instructed her curious husband not to open. After she left, the curious husband opens the parcel and finds a snake inside. To his amazement, the snake speaks and warns the husband not to tell anybody about its presence otherwise it would unleash the wrath of witches on the community. The husband as you must have guessed by now did just that and so Ebola was unleashed!
Furthermore, it was believed that accepting patients with Ebola would provoke the witch who would then spread the disease to West Point. As the story passed from person to person, of course, different versions emerged. However, in a nutshell, this was the view of the residents of West Point and the reason why they chased the Ebola infected patients away from their community.
On the night of the attack, some one hundred locals, armed with whatever they found approached the Ebola clinic to chase away the 29 patients in it and they succeeded. The assistant health minister at that time, Tolbert Nyenswah, was quoted as saying ‘residents of West Point were angry’. Of course, they were angry, who wouldn’t be?
The Liberian ministry of health failed woefully! The international community failed miserably too. I know West Point sounds like a place in New York but this West Point isn’t.
You just can’t assume that the people know what you know or disrespect them by imposing a facility on them without consulting with them. This also brings to light the importance of cultural competency when dealing with an epidemic. I would have thought the W.H.O were experts at this kind of stuff, but what do I know!
Next time you read a weird story like this one, please read in between the line, most of the time a big man in a big office has failed to do his job and the poor masses, the poor masses, they get the blame!
