Ebola still poses a serious threat…”Guinea and Sierra Leone continue to see 20 to 30 new Ebola cases each week.”
By Kent Brantly
WashingtonPost.com
July 17, 2015
Crisis often generates a tension between fear and compassion. Much of the reaction to Ebola in the United States last year was evidence of fear trumping compassion. We saw public health policy being guided by fear rather than by the best available science. We observed sufferers of Ebola — and even healthy individuals who simply volunteered to fight the virus — being treated not like victims or heroes but criminals and threats to the public. These attitudes broke my heart, not just for the casualties of this public attitude but also for the public itself.
When we discriminate against those for whom we ought to have compassion, we lose our sense of empathy. We become callous, and our humanity is eroded. We too quickly give up on caring for people with a protracted need for help, leaving the defenseless to fend for themselves.
My wife, Amber, and I, along with our two children, recently returned to Liberia — where I contracted Ebola one year ago — to visit friends and colleagues. We had the opportunity to say thank you and to express our deep gratitude to the many who cared for me in my illness, who fasted and prayed for me in their churches and who took action in official capacities to allow a patient sick with Ebola to be evacuated across the Atlantic Ocean. Though too short, it was a meaningful reunion. Coming back to the place we called home for a little less than a year brought many memories: familiar faces, familiar scenery, the memorable finger-snap handshake common across that part of the world. But there were also unfamiliar experiences: chlorinated hand-washing stations outside every business, church and public building; fewer embraces than one might have expected for such a joyful reunion; the missing faces of those who fell prey to the savage predator of Ebola.
The Rest…HERE
