BS: Ebola and the Missionaries

Subject: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 02:35 PM

No, not a new band, but do we need a separate thread for the issue of Are the missionaries doing more harm than good in the current outbreak of Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea? I am the first, as you know, to ask this type of question, but don't want the thread on the breakout itself to get sidetracked.

So my question to the forum is, IS this a sidetrack, in which case let's post stuff about that here, instead of there?

Or is this part of the main story, in which case, never mind and we can close this thread afte we reach that consensus?

I think both issues are hugely important.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 03:51 PM

A difficult question, since one must evaluate the work of many groups, some with medical doctors in the forefront (Seventh Day Adventists) and others with only moderate to minimal training in health procedures.

I can't see that a thread which lumps all groups together has any value.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 04:27 PM

I grew up as one of the 'plain people'. Those days are long past- more than 60 years past, in fact - but to this day I donate to and admire the Mennonite charity groups. #1: I know they are not going to gouge the recipients. #2: They are conscientious and will do their best. #3: If there is money involved, it will be rightly allocated, even if there happens to be no formal accounting. #4: They won't proselytise or allow their efforts to be contingent upon anyone's religious beliefs or racial happenstance.

They and 'Doctors without Borders' are among my heroes.

So far as I know, the Mennonite group is not involved in the current crisis but at a certain point they may well be.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 04:40 PM

So far, no need for separate thread on a religious element of the problem, I see.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 05:06 PM

Quakers won't proselytise either, so we can exclude both those groups from what are commonly considered "missionaries" whose "job" it is to promote "Christianity"[sic] .

As for Doctors Without Borders, I couldn't agree more, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 Oct 14 - 08:43 PM

I'm pretty sure anyone helping with Ebola has their hands full just dealing with it, whatever personal belief system may be getting them through it. I think Racism is a far more dangerous dynamic there (and worldwide esp in the USA) than any proselytizing may be.

I think we who choose not to engage Ebola personally from safe US space-- where our health system has developed thanks to stolen/undonated Black cadavers-- don't get to judge those who are engaging it.

Check out the book 'Medical Apartheid.'

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 05:58 AM

Christians get a rough ride on here.
Their provision of medical aid to the poorest of the poor, risking their own lives and forsaking a safe and comfortable life at home, is worthy of a mention.

Re. The identification of Ebola, had there been an existing name among the locals it would have been used.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 12:24 PM

I find this a very strange thread indeed. Why are missionaries an "issue"? I have read quite a bit on this story and nowhere have I found any reference to this.
In fact, I find the concept of even asking such a thing about those who are risking their own well being, offensive.
As for christians getting a rough ride here, it is true, they do. Christian bashing is the last bastion of acceptable stupidity..talk about stereotyping...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 12:32 PM

Christian bashing is the last bastion of acceptable stupidity.

Wrong.

Muslim bashing is the last bastion of acceptable stupidity.

And "Christians"[sic] deserve a rough ride when they fuck up.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 12:48 PM

Everyone deserves a bashing when they fuck up. However, It seems acceptable to make huge generalizations about some religious groups. I find those kind of sweeping statements offensive, about any group.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Rumncoke
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:09 PM

I was listening to the radio in the car a few weeks back and heard how the religious order of nursing nuns in a hospital - I think in Africa, was told by the local government to stop holding prayer meetings in the middle of the day as it was not acceptable as patients could hear them.

The local chief asked that the meetings be allowed to continue, as the patients would rather have some, any, religious observance rather than nothing at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:21 PM

Religion is a two way street. I have good memories of faith based charities working alongside infrastructure rebuilding when I did some voluntary work, designing manufacturing equipment for hand use in non urban areas.

On the other hand, I recall seeing two charities in a village in Kenya where a third charity I was involved with was working on irrigation. the two faith charities were concentrating on building a church and mosque at opposite ends of the village, on the basis that their work can bring membership expansion. Iy was the missionary clause I found less than altruistic, not to mention the judgement side..

Most people in the affected areas are superstitious and faith based care may well be a comfort to them.

Local government / local chief / patients can hear nuns praying?? Are you sure it was the radio? I didn't think The Daily Ma*l ran a radio channel??

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:24 PM

Re. The identification of Ebola, had there been an existing name among the locals it would have been used.

Nonsense, though that is an aside. There was malaria before white folks got there, it's called malaria, not any of the native terms for it. There was sleeping sickness before white folks started calling it Trypanosomiasis. We never take the native words for diseases, we name them usually for the place *we* first found it, like ebola and dengue, or we make up a white person's word for it, like Onchocerciasis.

But that is an aside. Thinking that just because white people have heard of it now means it was just discovered is old-fashioned. To be kind.

Kinda like thinking art started in Europe because white folks hadn't found any cave paintings outside Europe yet...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 01:43 PM

Diseases get renamed for good scientific and medical reasons. Each local community may have a different name for a particular malady. That is a situation that would certainly hamper medical research. It is fairly common in the scientific community to have a common name for the same thing..makes perfect sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 06:01 PM

A comic on UK telly last night said that The US were considering invading Ebola..

😏

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 06:39 PM

"Re. The identification of Ebola, had there been an existing name among the locals it would have been used."

It was named after the Ebola River in 1976.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 06:52 PM

Why is the world response to this so slow, do you think?

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 07:06 PM

Racism.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 07:08 PM

See "Anybody else watching Ebola break out?" thread, Date: 04 Oct 14 - 03:07 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 07:12 PM

I think most people don't see this outbreak as an emergency. Four thousand deaths means nothing these days. In the days of Biafra, about 1 1/2 million people in the Ibo breakaway state starved to death (1967-9). What is a few thousand people compared to that or many other starvations? I don't mean to sound cold about it, but it's the only reason I can think of. We just don't care.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 09:37 PM

I think it has to do with the majority of people who are affected not having much influence (money, power). I don't know if the "world response to this" is "so slow" or reporting of it is. I also don't know if it's the "world response" or that of the US that's being questioned. I suspect WHO were on this from the beginning, but there has never been a lot "the world" could do if it got involved.

The most effective thing that might have helped control the spread of the disease would have been people not touching the bodies of the sick or dead, or objects contaminated with their body fluids. Telling people they can't care for their loved ones or perform the traditional burial rituals obviously isn't that effective. It would have been more effective than anything else, but people first would have had to believe changing the way they did these serious and sacred things would have kept the sickness from spreading.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 11:16 PM

Oops wrong thread for that question my fault sorry. Definitely see the other Ebola thread.

The way to stop it is to waltz in and not LET them care for the ill or dead, which is an awful thing to do to people, and takes a huge number of other people going in and isolating people who love and need each oher from each other.

Yet it must me done.

Is religion in the way, is the question for this thread. I apologize for forgetting that myself, let's uncreep, shall we?

Blicky to other thread for the other issues.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 02:22 AM

Starvation in Biafra wasn't contagious. You couldn't catch it in Western countries.

Previous Ebola breakouts have died down as quickly as they started, often before WHO agents could identify index patients. This time, the strain appears to be rather hardy and resistant to our natural body defences.

Add in the ease of international travel, as per many flu issues and this time the world has to look at it differently. Whilst deploring tardiness, the "wait and see" philosophy was borne of experience not racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:11 AM

This is a dreadful disease and obviously needs to be contained. Nevertheless, I suspect that its long term impact will be as nothing compared to the impact of climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. This will, of course, devastate poorer countries, like the W. African states being affected by Ebola now, first but it will get everyone on the planet eventually.

It's interesting (if that's the right word!) that the mass media and western political establishments are presently agonising over Ebola and ignoring climate change. In her recent book, 'This Changes Everything' the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein shows that the increasing release of CO2 emissions and the tardy responses to the growing danger of catastrophic climate change can be directly attributed to the prevailing economic dogma of the neo-liberal free market. The mass media and western political establishments are presently 'slaves' to this dogma and probably welcome the diversion provided by Ebola.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:21 AM

Missionaries are a problem. I have a friend in the armed forces, who is a present posted out to train and educate missionaries on the dangers associated with Ebola from a security viewpoint.
It is apparently very difficult to convince these well meaning people of the dangers, not only to themselves but to national security.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:34 AM

Climate change is a great threat, but it is an ongoing situation not news.
Ebola and IS are an acute crisis. That makes news.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:41 AM

Quite so Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:26 AM

Climate change may not be news, as far as the mass media is concerned, but note that the three main parties, in the UK, virtually ignored it at their recent party conferences.

Just imagine, though, how deadly a disease like Ebola will be in a world devastated by floods, droughts, crop failures, rising sea levels and ferocious cross-border and internecine wars fought over dwindling resources.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:37 AM

Ebola Virus as terrible as it may seem, has effected a far smaller number of people than tuberculosis and malaria, which may kill a thousand or more a day in
Africa. And both are treatable and preventable.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 12:13 PM

It has only just started.
It is exponential.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 01:08 PM

Is religion why people bury their dead at all? All bodies need to be cremated immediately.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 01:17 PM

Just been reading a briefing by Prof Lyndsey Davies, who I used to know as our regional director of public health, now advising HMG.

We cannot rely on it dying out as it has in the past, but the impetus to find a vaccine or other protection is far greater now. Drug companies have better incentive to get there. Interesting point.

Far too late for some and the combination of commercial indifference to third world health issues combined with religious interference (HIV retrovirals kill you, inoculations are a route for genocide etc) are a huge issue and the realisation of the globalisation of these issues is getting complacent interests to sit up.

It isn't just Africa. Tuberculosis was becoming rare here, yet the multi drug resistant strain has led to far more negative pressure side rooms in hospitals being fitted, a crude but telling statistic. We are global, his problems are our problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:33 PM

Is religion why people bury their dead at all? All bodies need to be cremated immediately.

This is the thread about whether religion is in the way of the reponse to the current outbreak.

There is a separate thread for other ebola issues.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 03:50 AM

Mrr says: Is religion why people bury their dead at all? All bodies need to be cremated immediately.

Oh, I'm sure that local burial practices could be considered religious, and therefore suspect. So, yes, that then gives enlightened Americans and Europeans the right to barge in and tell the indigenous people how they must behave when they grieve for their dead.

Somehow....that just doesn't seem right. There ought to be a better, more respectful way.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 05:06 AM

Ok. Try this.

Bury your dead and rely on God to make sure the virus is destroyed and contained.


Sorry Joe. Tact and approach, not respect for non clinical factors. This is a clinical issue. Persuading and trying to get people to understand the risks rather than compromise. Compromise is as effective as not bothering in the first place.

Slightly academic as there are no cremetoriums in many of the affected areas, and hermetically sealed body bags are not always available. Hence an outbreak that dies out if localised is getting out of control as the index patients cross each other's paths, geographically speaking.

Burying, whilst the only practical solution for putting bodies to rest merely incubates the next outbreak.

It's a problem, but a practical one. The religious angle would be a factor if cremation were an option, but open pyres can exacerbate not destroy, and cremation facilities are not always available. Burial is the only option for many, regardless of religious considerations.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 07:01 AM

Racism sez we can decide for Africans from this bastion of well-meaning White Privilege.

Really?

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 08:14 AM

Buried bodies are very unlikely to be a vector.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 09:09 AM

Crematoria , surely ??

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 09:29 AM

Buried bodies, according to the brefing via CE Bulletin, (a Dept of Health daily briefing sent to NHS bodies, I still appear to be on the mailing list,) says that hermetically sealed body bags or coffins are a reasonable precaution as until body fluids dry out fully and total dessication is achieved, eradication cannot be guaranteed. The double whammy being that the better the seal, the longer that takes.

I am no expert on this in any sense, but read the information for health professionals with interest.

Racism can decide many things if you try hard enough to push your values. "White privilege" isn't relevant, answering the call for help is though. It is patronising in the extreme to say that such aid is arrogance. In addition, this is not a local problem, it is potentially global so a matter for all to combat with the tools available. If those tools include haematological knowledge and established infection control measures, all the better.

The area this is affecting is not some back water that idiots can get all condescending about, rattling on about Western values on an indiginous population. The healthcare systems are, funding allowing, about as "Western" as you can get. Qualifications from the medical school in Freetown are accepted as to relevant Royal College standards, making local doctors as approriate as their colleagues in The EU, USA, Canada, Anzac etc.

All this tosh about inflicting white man values... Now that IS racism...

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:32 AM

The infrastructure in most of the afflicted countries isn't very good. As Musket so astutely pointed out, starvation isn't contagious. However, numbness to death is contagious. We have been watching starving kids for decades; dead kids bombed in war for decades, kids hacked to death by machetes for decades. Four thousand deaths is a pittance in comparison.

Some facts about Ebola elude even the 'educated' parts of the world. Hell, we struggle to deal with whether it can go aerosol without an understanding of what that really means. Can the disease spread through the air? Of course it can. Don't believe that, just go stand in front of an Ebola carrier when s/he sneezes. Yes it can transmit through the air.

Maybe a mantoux test adapted for Ebola could be developed. (Wayward thought.)

I do understand the 'need to help' syndrome. That said, isolation is the only thing other than a vaccine that will stop the spread of the disease. Superstition or folk wisdom/religion does little to help matters. Lead, follow or get out of the way mightn't be such a bad slogan at this juncture.

A Herman cartoon (tried to locate but can't) showed a man with splotches covering much of his body standing before a doctor who was sitting at his desk. Beneath the desk the doctor is loading a revolver. The caption reads "I'm sure you'll understand. We don't want to start an epidemic do we?" That used to be funny.

This whole religious thing in Africa (and elsewhere) is somewhat of a mystery to me. I expect it will remain so. However, emergency situations are not improved when the people driving the boats are all going in different directions. And as always, the people who need to be in control of the situation have to understand logistics because a big part of the present problem is that the logistics are a mess.

Situations of this nature need people who deal with the disease, people who deal with the populations involved and people to do as they are instructed without guidance from the heavens. In other words, there has to be a central command with the authority and muscle to do what needs doing.

"MOSCOW, October 7 (RIA Novosti) - The Canadian government will send 300,000 personal protective equipment (PPE), or face shields, to West Africa to combat the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, the country's Public Health Agency said in a news release."

Please note that this started in early to mid-September and Canada eventually received word on where to deliver the damned things. Folks, that ain't organization and the organization I think mostly at fault is the WHO. I am still waiting for them to do something right.

And last, because I have likely pissed off everyone, I figure that if the geometric growth of Ebola spread holds true for another forty weeks, over seven billion people will be infected.

"There was an acute shortage of masks and protective clothing for the medical and health personnel, who were hard hit by the disease. Lack of epidemiological information about the disease hampered the prompt application of effective control measures. Because of inadequate communication, panic developed in the community and weakened cooperation and support from the public."

That was said about the SARS epidemic of 2003.

Have a good day all.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 03:51 PM

Joe, that's exactly the problem - science does actually know what is needed and it's horrible and inhumane and unkind and all kinds of terrible horrible ugly nasty bad things, I completely agree, but it IS, unfortunately, what is needed.

It's not a question of enlightenment. It's a question of knowledge. I learned my science IN West Africa, it doesn't change the science.

They don't need masks, it's not airborne. They need gowns and gloves by the thousands daily, so they can take them off in an educated fashion and regown and reglove constantly, taking time and time and time they don't have, and handing them out by the thousands to all villagers and townspeople so that as soon as a child has a fever the CHILD can be wrapped in the gown to keep the sweat in and the parents can also gown and glove and not kiss and learn how to take the gowns off inside out properly and so on.

That would reduce one major source of transmission by a large proportion.

A more powerful source of transmission is the virus bomb that is a mammal body killed by ebola. They should be treated as the hazardous waste that they are, they really really really should, they ARE extremely hazardous and you don't need your body for the afterlife or after death in real life, you really really don't, and you can treat a corpse with all kinds of respect and still burn it instantly, have ceremony, weep and wail, yes your loved one has died and I have lost beloveds and weeping and wailing over the loss is absolutely appropriate and necessary but that doesn't detract from the medical necessity of getting rid of that hazardous material as if it were hazardous material, being instantly and without coming any closer to it than you must.

This is the real world where a horrible disease is being mollycoddled by the unwillingness of the educated to impose reality on the ignorant, and it will cost them both a mean, ugly, nasty and terrible price.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:20 PM

I agree. You must preserve the living. Why can not open fires be used if indeed it is not airborne which i am dubious about. In any catastrophe we need to figure out rapidly what to do with corpses even without an epidemic....

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: mg
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:24 PM

I also think that anyone who is willing should divert some or all of their chrkstmas budget to this.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 11:38 PM

Certainly we need to use "best practices" from a medical standpoint; but this must be done with sensitivity and an honest respect for religious and cultural considerations, along with the need people have to grieve.
Gross disregard for the wisdom, and for the religious and cultural sensitivities of others, will not get us where we want to go.

We must consider the whole person with respect, not just medical necessity. It's a balance that must be achieved.

And of course, missionaries also must respect the cultural and religious sensitivities of the people they seek to serve.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:42 AM

but this must be done with sensitivity and an honest respect for religious and cultural considerations
No, it mustn't. Respect should take a far, far back seat to reality, which is, sorry, screw the sensitivities, get the bloody thing isolated. Do what science says is required even if it means trampling on the beliefs and sensitivities of others.

The balance is between life and death, not between respect and disrespect.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 02:19 AM

Cultural sensitivities...

This is an area of countries with a very "Western" healthcare set of systems and antibiotics and stents fitted by vascular surgeons overtook witch doctors and superstition a long time ago. Cancer patients get chemotherapy not ritual dancing.

For crying out loud, nurses in Liberia are threatening strike action over risk and pay. How bloody "Western" is that???

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: bubblyrat
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 06:47 AM

Seems to me that these epidemics, gradually spreading to become pandemics,have occurred at regular intervals throughout history ; possibly as a (rather unpleasant and random ) way of keeping populations in check ?? One has to imagine a combination of natural phenomena and "higher powers" at work here , otherwise humanity would undoubtedly destroy itself .

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Musket
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 09:42 AM

If you can think of a higher power, let us know. Religious people have been looking for the elusive bugger for years....

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:34 PM

We are prey and ebola is a predator. There are a lot of us, it's about time something evolved that could eat us without us being able to technologize ourselves out of it. But I as a prey animal will do what I can to outwit it; ebola being a virus that isn't all that hard...


Isolate
Isolate
Isolate

Everything else is just getting in the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Ebola and the Missionaries
From: GUEST,#
Date: 13 Oct 14 - 12:41 PM

The Canucks may have a vaccine.