Ebola ...countries not helping out
Why are countries like China, Japan, Saudi Arabia etc not helping out either with aid money or feet on the ground to help combat Ebola.
Is it always the "west" who has to stump up...it always appears so to me anyway.
Monrovia: Cuban nurses and doctors are heading to Liberia and Guinea to help the fight against Ebola, as the death toll from the outbreak neared 4900 and countries raced to get experimental vaccines ready for "real world use".
The latest contingent of 83 reinforcements sent by Havana brought the total number of Cuban health workers in West Africa to at least 248, after 165 medical professionals were sent to Sierra Leone last month.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/cuba-flexes-medical-muscle-in-fight-against-ebola-in-west-africa-20141023-11aebn.html#ixzz3GwHI62Je
I was surprised to see that Cuba specially trains an abundance of medical staff and sends them to all stricken areas like to Haiti and also the Phillipines and now Africa.
A decade ago I lectured to the staff of the Ministry of Health in Cuba. After my talk the Minister happily said, this graphs showed that Cuba is the healthiest of the poor countries! On the way out a young staff member whispered in my ear:
- He is wrong, Cuba is just the poorest of the healthy countries.
Gapminder World describes that both were right, www.bit.ly/l02EOP People in Cuba has the same life span as Chile, Portugal, South Korea, Greece and USA. But Cuba has the lowest income per person of all these countries with Life Expectancy of 79 years! Is Cuba´s upper left position due to good health policy or bad economic policy? I would say YES due to both reason, and now it seems as the new leader is fed up with the bad economic policy and starts to allows some privet enterprises in Cuba.http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/05/17/cuba.private.businesses/index.html
I knew Cuba had done so...but what about the others!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-crisis-how-much-are-different-countries-donating-to-fight-the-outbreak-and-is-it-enough-9806212.html
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/09/ebola-outbreak-response-breakdown-key-funding-pledges
Another list which even includes Timor 1 million pledge. That surprised me.
Australian Red Cross has also sent specialist aid workers to Sierra Leone and Liberia, where they are providing much-needed medical care in health facilities struggling to cope with the outbreak.
The federal government has allocated $18m in funding to help the international efforts to stop the spread of the disease. Of that, $3.5m has gone to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and $2.5m to non-government organisations. The organisations that have already received money are World Vision, Save the Children, Caritas and Plan International.
A further $2m was requested and given to the British government to support the delivery of “frontline services in Sierra Leone, through the UK government”, said Ewen McDonald from Dfat.
Australia is also one of only two countries to have given money to the UN trust fund on Ebola. The request for funding was made directly by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
Great to hear those amounts given. Have not seen this in the press before.
Appalingly interesting to see as fear mounts people are being stigmatised by country of origin.
"Liberians hit back at Ebola stigma
By Efrosini Costa | October 23, 2014
As Ebola panic spreads across the US, a social media campaign by Liberians hopes to end the stigma and prejudice.
“You’re from Liberia, so you have a disease.”
When Shoana Solomon’s nine-year-old daughter came home from school and told her what her US classmates were saying, Solomon knew there was trouble ahead.
The photographer and TV presenter had recently moved her daughter to America from liberia’s capital Monrovia only a month ago.
But, despite coming from an Ebola-affected area she was not subjected to any scrutiny upon her arrival on American soil.
However as fear of Ebola mounts, Liberians in the US are increasingly finding themselves stigmatised because of the paranoia gripping the world.
So, Solomon decided to launch a campaign to address the social hostility by photographing her self with the sign “I am Liberian not a virus” and posting it to social media with the hashtags #EbolaStigma and #IamALiberianNotAVirus."
http://www.mindfood.com/article/liberians-hit-back-at-ebola-stigma/
Cuba has sent 250 doctors on the ground Radish.