Panic and hysteria have become the worst enemies of the health workers struggling bravely in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to contain the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history. Airlines are cancelling flights. A growing number of other African countries are severing air and sea links, and neighbours such as Senegal and Ivory Coast have closed their borders. Fearful that their employees could be locked in a death trap, international companies are evacuating expatriate staff. Shockingly, the Philippines has decided to recall its 115-strong contingent of troops stationed as part of UN peacekeeping in Liberia at the very moment they are most needed as a bulwark for national security forces.
While the level of alarm is understandable, there is a risk that the measures being taken to isolate the three worst affected states will compound a growing humanitarian crisis. Health experts have been warning for weeks that trade and travel restrictions will complicate international intervention efforts, potentially starve affected populations of basic supplies and also push more travellers across the region’s porous borders where they are more difficult to screen.
There is a grim echo in this of past African tragedies when the world turned away and abandoned whole populations to a gruesome fate. There is more than an echo, too, of the Hollywood shock movies that have painted a dystopian image of what happens to societies gripped by a deadly epidemic.