Dear Editor,
That America’s health authorities have confirmed that they have diagnosed the first patient with ebola in the United States of America, really demonstrates the interconnectedness of our world – the global village.
We, in Guyana and the Caribbean, ought to be paying very careful attention to what we are doing here, and constantly evaluating our own preparedness in the event of the presentation of any signs or symptoms of ebola by anyone. Indeed, it is a frightening situation, particularly in circumstances where we may not have the medical and other technologies as well as the critical resources to manage any such situation. Beyond that, ebola is spiralling into a sort of global public health crisis. If there is a public health crisis then other sectors of society will be severely affected and could even collapse.
Looked at from a global perspective, international trade would be affected, and the landscape of economies could be changed, with the increase in poverty and poor sanitation making it more difficult to eradicate the virus. It is a circular situation whose effects could be more debilitating than a war.
Confined primarily to West Africa, sadly, the ebola outbreak continues to claim lives. This disease is believed to be animal-borne, with fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family acting as the natural virus hosts. Humans first contracted the virus via contact with bodily fluids of an infected animal, after which it was then spread to other humans by contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
Poor sanitation conditions in West Africa coupled with mourners coming into contact with the deceased at burial ceremonies and rituals enabled the disease to spread rapidly.
Unfortunately, ebola is just one of many diseases considered to be zoonotic, or shared with animals. When a disease is shared with animals, its impacts are intensified. If an individual is sick, they are able to generally keep to themselves until they are healed, avoiding spreading their sickness. But with animals, this is not the case. Other animals that can transmit this disease may continue to come into contact with the disease-carrying bats, or even other animals who received the virus in the forest.
Undoubtedly, the activities of humankind encroaching upon natural habitats, changing them as they go along, felling trees, extracting other natural resources and moving animals and people along with the different viruses they carry, the greater the potential for infection and the spread of pathogens new to humans.
Human activities are driving bats to find new habitats amongst human populations. For example, more than half of Liberia’s forests, home to 40 endangered species, including the western chimpanzee, have been sold off to industrial loggers during President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s post-war government, according to figures released by Global Witness.
Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, and chopping down trees are all driving deforestation in Sierra Leone, where total forest cover has now dropped to just 4 per cent, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which says if deforestation continues at current levels, Sierra Leone’s forests could vanish altogether by 2018.
Again, the 1994 ebola outbreak was confined to the small African country of Gabon, and took 31 lives. It occurred in gold mining camps, where the habits of people were nomadic – moving in for a season and moving out when the work was complete. But what if the situation were different where people had never disrupted ecological arrangements in order to extract precious minerals? Would individuals have moved to that area and risked coming into contact with disease carrying animals?
Perhaps we may never know the answers to these questions. Nevertheless, the recent discussions on how ebola and other diseases are affecting the natural environment are forcing us to look at our world from a different standpoint. Earth is not just humans, but rather we are tied to other species. We are afraid that if we do not begin to look at the world around us as being more than just us, we risk letting future diseases become even more disastrous than the 2014 ebola outbreak.
This is why we are calling on the competent authorities to begin an aggressive public education programme on this virus; train our airport and other allied staff on how to approach any such case; enhance the competencies and capabilities of environmental and public health bodies to enforce compliance with public health and environmental policies and rules in all communities; establish a shared database among concerned ministries and agencies and work with community leaders and other stakeholders. Time is not on our side; we only have today.
Let us be more conscious and alert and remember that public health is everybody’s business.
Yours faithfully,
Royston King
Executive Director
Environmental
Community Health
Organization
