Ebola in Liberia: Eric Duncan and the 'Price of Deception' (Daily Observer, Liberia)
"Mr.
Duncan's failure to level with the screening team at Roberts International
Airport is the most unfortunate thing about this episode. Having seen this
woman vomiting and knowing that she had died before he left for the United States,
he must have suspected or known that he had had come in contact with a possible
Ebola victim. While pregnant women do indeed vomit, it doesn’t tend to takes
their lives. And then there is the bleeding. That should have been enough for
Duncan to put two and two together and suspect the cause of her illness. Her
death, followed by her brother's, should surely have driven him immediately to
a testing center for an Ebola check, and even quarantine himself."
The deadly Ebola virus, which has killed over 3,000 people
in West Africa, with 1,500 in Liberia alone, has reached the United States of
America. It was carried there by a Liberian citizen who left here on September
19 on Brussels Airlines flight.
Thomas Eric Duncan, a former employee of FedEx Liberia and a
resident of the 72nd Community on SKD Boulevard,
Paynesville, arrived in Dallas, Texas on September 20. He had successfully
undergone thorough testing at the Roberts International Airport (RIA), which
detected no sign of Ebola.
But according
to The New York Times, which
traced Duncan's contacts five days prior to his departure, he had come in contact
with two infected people - the pregnant daughter of his landlord and her
brother. The woman took ill and asked Duncan to take her to and from the
hospital, accompanied by her brother. She was said to have vomited and bled
profusely en route and died the following day. The brother, too, died a day
later.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Mr. Duncan's failure to level with the screening team at RIA
is the most unfortunate thing about this episode. Having seen this woman
vomiting and knowing that she had died before he left for the United States, he
must have suspected or known that he had had come in contact with a possible
Ebola victim. While pregnant women do indeed vomit, it doesn’t tend to takes
their lives. And then there is the bleeding. That should have been enough for
Duncan to put two and two together and suspect the cause of her illness. Then
her death, followed by her brother's, should surely have driven him immediately
to a testing center for an Ebola check, and even quarantine himself.
This is precisely why on Monday this week we felt compelled to
write an editorial on two senior Health Ministry officials (MOH)
who immediately quarantined themselves after contacting people the officials
thought may have been infected. The first subject of our editorial was Dr.
Bernice Dahn, Liberia's chief medical officer. Her special
assistant fell ill and she proceeded to his home to visit with him. When his
sickness worsened and it looked as if he might have been infected with the
virus, Dr. Dahn, exercising the highest degree of
personal and professional integrity, immediately quarantined herself.
Her quarantine ends next Thursday.
The second MOH official we
editorialized was Madam Yah MartorZolia, deputy minister for planning and development. She
had gone to her native Nimba County to assist its Ebola
health team. When it was time for her to return, she was given a driver who had
been in direct contact with Ebola patients while driving an ambulance. No one
told her, and she had absolutely no way of knowing. She had driven nearly 200
miles with the driver to Monrovia, and even shared her cell phone with him a
number of times. At several checkpoints, however, he showed signs of a very
high fever and at one point nurses had to pour cold water on him. When they arrived
in Monrovia, she gave him money to find his way to a doctor, and the driver
died the following day!
What a great and blessed difference it would make if all of
us behaved like these two exemplary and outstanding Liberian women! They didn't
wait for their boss, Health Minister Dr. Walter Gwenigale,
to tell them what to do. Dr. Dahn is a physician and
Madam Zolia a molecular biologist, so both of them
are scientists who already knew what to do - and followed their consciences.
We submit that Mr. Duncan should have acted in the same
manner the minute he heard that his pregnant passenger had died. Instead, he
boarded a plane bound for Texas, and into a home with
children and others.
It is our fervent prayer that by God's grace, NO ONE has
been or will be infected by Duncan, and that he himself will live to tell the
story about what really happened and why.
John Donne was right: Indeed “No man is an island” and the
world IS a global village. We are each responsible for our own and one another's
safety against our common enemy - Ebola.
