In Africa is a Country Sisonke Msimang writes:
...While health professionals are crucial frontline responders, the Ebola crisis is indeed too important to be left to medical personnel. Like most responses to humanitarian disasters that are mounted by the international community, the Ebola response is focused too narrowly on the technical aspects of containing a problem, and too little on the underlying social and political reasons why the problem has been allowed to fester in the first place.
Liberia has been especially interesting in this regard. Ebola has certainly foregrounded the reality of Liberia's non-existent health system but the failure of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's government to contain Ebola is emblematic of much larger problems of governance, leadership and trust. The virus has emerged from the nexus of these overlapping problems.
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