The West Africans have been catching media Hell for months now. They are blamed for everything from living in filth to pursuing strange funeral practices. Too dumb to fight off the Ebola virus. It's a game of Blame The Victim, racist to the core and aimed to damn locals for the current Ebola outbreak.
In truth, billboards went up in Monrovia early in August explaining basic protection tactics. Flyers went out in several languages and the communities responded. And it does take a community response to beat Ebola because individuals and single families, by themselves, are pretty much helpless when they try to do quarantine.
Now, the Liberian Red Cross reports that body pick-up in Montserrado County has fallen from 315 in the week of September 15-21 down to 117 deaths last week.
This is the continuation of a pattern seen all through October. The Liberia National Red Cross Society's Secretary General, Ms. Fayiah Tamba, reports that their teams buried 187 bodies during the week of October 6-12 and 155 bodies from October 13-19. The week of October 20-26 continues this pattern with the lowest total in recent months.
For the numerically obsessed that's a 63% decline from maximum. You have to be impressed: these Africans as a community are pretty darn good at this stuff. (There's a normal load for Red Cross picking up bodies. The variable part of the current load is from Ebola. As a result, estimating the Ebola change at two-thirds is likely an underestimation for the change.)
Previously from April into September the Ebola outbreak had been doubling every two weeks in the slum areas. More like 25 to 30 days for rural areas. And now it looks like the billboard campaign and zillions of one-page flyers and treatment with a generic antiviral med have taken hold. From Front Page Africa:
"FOR THE SAKE of our future we hope the drop we are witnessing would mark the beginning of the end of Ebola, a disease no one expected and one no one ever wants to see in our midst again."When the decline was first noted, World Health Organization's Bruce Aylward warned while the numbers suggest “getting an upper hand on the virus,... A slight decline in cases in a few days versus getting this thing closed out is a completely different ball game. (Reporting a single-area decline to mortality) is like saying your pet tiger is under control.”
For details on community response, together with a brief survey for what the scientists are saying, roll on through le trump l'orange.