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A World Without Enough Empathy: How two contagions have much in common

by Dr Peter Katona | ashoka | Ashoka UK
Friday, 24 October 2014 16:05 GMT

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The world is in crisis again. A highly contagious disease, Ebola, is disrupting West Africa and another contagious disease, ISIS, is spreading in the Middle East. Both have taken thousands of lives; both, after brewing and expanding for months, with repeated calls for assistance, have had a very belated and inadequate response from the rest of the world. Consequently each is spreading rapidly. Both are unprecedented Black Swans (low probability high impact events), and both have the potential to become global pandemics. In addition both an ISIS-related beheading and an Ebola diagnosed case have both occurred in the US.

 

A disease is contagious when it has the ability to spread from person to person. Both ISIS and Ebola have this capacity. And this has deadly implications; especially with the rampant fear, misconceptions, and hysteria they both create and spread. Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids. ISIS is spread by contact with social media and new found freedoms enabling recruitment, as in Tunisia.

 

The World Health Organization (WHO), the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Gates Foundation, Mark Zuckerberg, among others, have only recently taken an interest in Ebola - many months after the first cases occurred, and a few months after dire calls for help started coming in from organizations on the ground like Doctors Without Borders and International Medical Corps. CDC has now sent 120 epidemiologists and DoD is sending 3,000 soldiers along with 1,700 mobile hospital beds and other supplies.

 

However, fiscal resources from these non-profits, departments and agencies have been diminished in recent years, and thus the resources they are currently posed to provide are limited. Their support often does not even involve direct patient care, and thus many additional doctors and nurses are also badly needed for direct patient care. Without a cure or vaccine for Ebola, it is of prime importance to have enough care providers to treat patients, and caseworkers to track contacts of cases. At least 70% of Ebola patients need to be isolated to reverse the spread. Despite this, care providers and caseworkers, trying to do their jobs, are being attacked and sometimes killed by local residents thinking they are spreading the disease. Fears of an impending travel ban keep some healthcare providers away. People are afraid to go to local hospitals for isolation, rather staying home or in hiding, thus infecting more and more people. While local residents often believe in witchcraft and herbs, the followers of ISIS also have the misconception that, for perceived non-believers, brutal violence is not only necessary but mandated. 

 

Islamic fanaticism also doesn’t have a viable preventative vaccine or cure. Perhaps more alarmingly, like those that are in denial or misinformed about the best way to treat Ebola, there is little opportunity for fruitful discussion of those brainwashed by ISIS’ morally bankrupt and socially disruptive philosophy. With dead bodies on the street and severed heads on social media, hysteria is now rampant both in West Africa and the Middle East.

 

One fear is how far these epidemics will spread to other regions. For Ebola it could be a traveler on an airline flight or someone illegally crossing a border. It could even be eating contaminated exotic meat smuggled into the U.S. in luggage. For ISIS it could be one of the thousands of western fighters returning home to Europe or the US with their western passports and continuing the terrorism they learned while fighting for ISIS in the Middle East.          

 

Leadership to combat these contagions on both fronts is lacking. There is distrust of government, police, military and foreign aid workers in many parts of West Africa. With neither West African countries nor WHO able to take the lead, the US and its’ partners have to lead relief efforts. With the Iraqi and Syrian governments unable to stop ISIS, the US and its allies also have to fill the very complicated vacuum left by an inadequate Iraqi military, a Sunni-Shia divide, and a brutal Syrian regime.

 

Both have similar economic consequences: Airlines have canceled flights; prices of staple goods are rising with food supplies dwindling; border posts are nonexistent or closed; and the situation has created scores of homeless refugees affecting neighboring countries. Both have activated constantly changing countermeasures: bombing ISIS from the air, and fine-tuning Ebola protocols on the ground. 

 

The UN Roadmap had it right when it said stopping Ebola is going to require a great deal of money, thousands more skilled health workers and logistics experts, massive communications efforts, huge food and nutrition support for the people of West Africa, and "coordination, coordination, coordination." The same applies to ISIS. Both are lacking.

 

If history repeats itself, both of these epidemics will eventually dissipate. But as this happens will Islamic fundamentalism step into West Africa to try to take credit for stopping the scourge? Or will they want to continue spreading it trying to blame the west? Without more strategic and meaningful early intervention – from pubic health, public safety, diplomatic and militaristic perspectives – it is only a matter of time before we will let our guard down again, only to see the next Ebola, ISIS or Spanish Flu. Empathy seems to be losing – at least for the present. 

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