February 02, 2015

Ebola: On The Way Out?

editor:	Gurmeet Singh

Is it too early to say? Yes- but- whisper it- Ebola looks like it’s ebbing. Indeed, it’s nowhere near eradicated, and it will take many more months (years?) of monitoring, social precaution and medical funding to stop a violent resurgence of the disease which ravaged communities across Western Africa last year, but the infection rate is not nearly as high as expected.

Indeed, such is the optimism of local Monrovians, that life is gradually getting underway once again; schools have re-opened, workplaces too- and what’s more important, people’s expectations are changing. They are beginning to engage in more relaxed and human forms of socialising, and beginning to treat one another as more than potential carriers of the disease, as this piece from the New York Times outlines.

It’s an under-remarked commentary on social upheavals, and it deserves to be mentioned; people feel more comfortable around one another again, and more comfortable mentally, enabling basic interactions to happen without a second thought, which must feel incredibly liberating.

However, authorities have warned that celebrating the eradication of a disease such as Ebola would be premature unless there were absolutely no existing or new cases. They do however appreciate the current trajectory of success is one that seemed unimaginable last year; they are now hoping to end the disease altogether, and not merely slow its spread.

Liberians themselves are very aware of one of the major reasons for the drop in the spread of the disease; citizen action. They themselves educated communities, organised help and structured and restructured social arrangements so that the causes of the spread were well-known, understood and obviated. It is a testament to the people that they were able and willing to self-organise in many areas of Liberia, when aid wasn’t forthcoming. International aid work absolutely helped, but as the article shows, it wasn’t an international effort alone that helped get this particular disease on the road to elimination.

Image: John Moore/Getty Images