Which do you prefer: Ebola or HIV?

I don’t know about you, but I have been very
scared of going to hospital these days. And it
is not because one is afraid of carrying out
an Ebola virus test. Far from it! Rather, it’s
that one no longer knows how safe even the
doctor that would attend to you is. You don’t
know who else he had seen before you. And
remember, before you see the doctor, you’d
also have to see a nurse, who would check
your vital signs – with the same equipment
she tested the patient before you and the
sweating-hot fever patient before that one. In
all my days of going to the hospital, for
instance, I have never seen where they
sterilised those cloth-and-tube equipment
they use to check blood pressure and heart
pulse. So, one is even afraid of leaving the
hospital with a disease one did not take to the
place ab initio.
And then, there is also the possibility of some
over zealous doctor, branding all and every
fever, Ebola and before you know it, you’re
quarantined for no just cause. These, indeed,
are perilous times. And to make matters
worse, our doctors are even on strike. Or are
they?
No! Doctors are not really on strike. What is
happening is that the doctors, all of whom
have two jobs (one in the public hospitals
and another in their private clinics), which
they have shown over the years that they
cannot cope with, have found a convenient
excuse to abandon the public sector work to
concentrate on their private practices. While
their private practice ensures that they make
enough money to live as kings today, the
public sector work guarantees them a plump
pension. Much like having your cake and
eating it. Smart guys! And while they are at it,
they also want to ensure that, not only does
the government continue to remunerate them
for the jobs not done but that the system
does not also recruit available, fresh and
more willing younger doctors to replace them
at the public hospitals. Talk about dog in a
manger! By the time we are through with
CONMESS, they’ll come up with yet another
‘MESS’. And the cycle goes on. But that’s talk
for another day. For now, my concern is with
Ebola.
I had always wondered why our forefathers
in Africa were so heartless as to go dump
some members of their communities afflicted
with certain ailments into the evil forest.
They did it to lepers, twins (and, sometimes,
their mothers too), as well as any other
ailment the witchdoctors could neither
understand nor have cure for. Such ailments
were simply abominable. But then, I was
judging our ancestors based on the medical
and research breakthroughs of our modern
world. Now, I know better. Now I know that
we owe our forefathers a trailerload of
apologies for joining the Whiteman to deride
their ways and means. For the current
outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has
shown that, as humans, we are really no
different from our illiterate forebears.
I am sure, if the evil forests were still in
existence today, we’d gladly be dumping
people there at the slightest suspicion of
Ebola. Even, in America and Europe, they now
have their own variants of the modern day
evil forest. They call it quarantine, isolation or
emergency treatment centres.
And once you’re quarantined, everyone
(including the doctors and nurses) keeps
away. Of course, you can’t blame anyone:
Was it not the doctors and nurses, who were
in the first line of fire when that harbinger of
death from Liberia was brought in? So, how
does that differ from the evil forest concept
of our forefathers?
Only last weekend, I got the story of one of
the medical personnel, who contracted the
virus and who was subsequently dumped at
some hospital in Yaba, Lagos, and
abandoned there – without anyone going to
as much as see him, let alone offer him food
and other palliative medication. We are just
waiting for him to start oozing out blood from
every opening in his body and then die, so we
can add him to the growing statistics of Ebola
deaths – and possibly burn down the hospital
along with his corpse. Yes, there is no
problem total destruction cannot solve. What
a way to die!
Ever and since the early eighties when I
watched HIV/AIDS waste away the duo of
actor Rock Hudson and grand slam winner
Arthur Ashe, it has always been my prayer
that, in my lifetime, HIV/AIDS would be put to
shame.
That ‘putting to shame’, I always thought,
would be by way of a cure. It never occurred
to be that, in my lifetime, AIDS would be
downgraded, as the most deadly killer of
mankind. That its pride of place would be so
taken over by another virus so deadly that
HIV would almost become desirable. Enter
Ebola! AIDS is now looking like child’s play.
Yes, HIV has now been put to shame. It is no
longer the worst pestilence to wish our
enemies.
I had this friend, who always sneered at a
particular radio jingle that says: ‘Being HIV
positive is not a death sentence’. My friend
would cynically reply: ‘Of course, no! Being
HIV positive is not a death sentence, it’s only
a life sentence’.
But, unlike HIV, Ebola is the real death
sentence!
Now, persons living with HIV AIDS (PLWHA)
can now look at the brighter side of things.
They are no longer the worst off, on God’s
earth. At least, they can boast of anti-retro
viral drugs. For Ebola, there’re no such
luxuries – once you catch it, you just begin
to count your days by the hours.
Now, the fear of Ebola, not HIV, is the
beginning of wisdom. In fact, it now amounts
to a prayer of sort if someone wishes you to
have HIV instead of Ebola. You could be
tempted to reply with a resounding ‘amen’,
because, with AIDS and HIV, you can be sure
of Anti-Retroviral Drugs. With Ebola, there is
nothing, apart from the fabled salt water and
bitter kola. And, of course, death. The
Americans, who have the drug for its
treatment are telling us it is still at the
experimental stage. While they are
administering it to their infected citizens,
they’re telling us they want to perfect it
before they can give us. Until then, we can
keep dying. Now, tell me, what can be the
worst outcome of giving us this experimental
drug? Death, of course! Now, what is bound
to happen to an untreated Ebola patient?
Death, as well! Sure death. So, why can’t
they let us have the drug and take our
chance? I just can’t understand!
And, you know, the most painful part in this
American shakara with Ebola treatment is
that our own Prof. Maurice Iwu (yes, the
same Iwu of INEC) was said to be among the
team that produced that ‘experimental’ drug
that is now making Obama and his
countrymen feel like the most intelligent
things God ever created.
Of course, it is not the first drug Prof. Iwu
would be creating. He has about half a dozen
others – including one that works like Viagra
but does not have all the adverse side effects
(And also boosts the immune system).
Unfortunately, Prof. Iwu comes from a
country that delights in destroying its own,
so, when people like him make such
discoveries, they have no choice but to sell
the patent. Some of those patents have been
bought by even the US military.
My only consolation is that Prof. Iwu is a
member of the team of experts set up by
President Goodluck Jonathan to find a
response to this Ebola epidemic.
Until that team comes up with something
more scientific, however, I have decided to
ignore both the Minister of Health, Onyebuchi
Chukwu, and his information counterpart,
Labaran Maku, on salt and bitter kola.
Yes, I have washed and washed my hands so
much that they’re now sore and nearly white
now. Yet, I have not stopped washing them.
Everyone is now walking about with hand
sanitizers in their pockets. We are no longer
hugging and pumping hands and fall over one
another as, culturally, we’re wont to. But that
has still not put our minds at rest.
So, irrespective of what Health Minister, Prof.
Chukwu, says, I am keeping up with chewing
bitter Kola. As stupid as it might sound to
Information Minister, Labaran Maku, I will
continue bathing with warm water and salt. If
my wife could use the same salt to wash
vegetables and fruits and the doctors
encourage it, on the ground that it kills
germs, I do not see any reason it would not
kill a few Ebola stains we come in contact
with. In fact, but for the fact that I’ve always
known that brine tasted very badly, I’d
probably have been drinking the salt solution
as well. We cannot just be giving the people
all the information we are currently giving
them about Ebola and all that we can offer
them, by way of cure/treatment is that they
should be washing their hands and stay away
from hospitals. Something sure sounds
rather irresponsible about this our response
to this looming epidemic.
So, if I get a call from the village tomorrow,
asking me to drink my urine or bathe with hot
ash to prevent or cure Ebola, I will not wait to
find out what research institute such village
man attended. I’ll just give it a try. If they say
we should grind green pepper and bathe with
it, I will try it too – even if they say we
should put a little bit of it into our eyes and
nostrils. If they say we should, instead of
making soup with bitterleaf, squeeze leaves
and drop the juice in our eyes and ears, I
might be tempted to try it too. If some
illiterate comes up tomorrow and tells us to
be using Dogonyaro as vegetable as cure for
Ebola, both the infected and the uninflected
would rush to it. We can’t just sit down and
do nothing, waiting for Ebola to catch up with
us. Whoever does not want us to try these
things out must, as a matter of urgency, give
us an alternative.
And nobody should just tell me that prayer is
the answer. I believe in the efficacy of
prayers but this Ebola thing needs more than
prayers. The schools are currently on
vacation but has anyone imagined what we’d
be battling with by the time our kids return to
school in September? Something bigger than
Boko Haram is surely in the offing.
And, come to think of it, this Ebola thing also
says a lot about our attitude to research in
this part of the world. Is it not a shame that
after nearly 40 years of the first outbreak of
Ebola, all we have done is sit back and wish
it would go away? Why do we never fund
researches? How much of medical research
do our governments and companies fund? Or
do we also have to subject that to quota
system and federal character? What do the
universities do with the little research grants
that get to them? What are our academics
contributing to the body of knowledge for
which they are daily dishing out
professorship to themselves? Why have
research and industry failed to meet need in
Africa?