Faith, Hope, and Love

On August 15, 2014, a friend (also my co-worker) emailed to see how my family in Nigeria was doing when she heard it had spread there. Below was my response (written on August 16 th ) and it answers why I partially hijacked my sister’s blog… I initially tried to use the Note function on Facebook but it didn’t seem to be working so I gave up and just wrote in dependable Microsoft Word – this reminds me to give a special shout out to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for donating money ($50 million) and services to the Ebola epidemic.  –TAI Thanks for always being so sweet... I have mixed emotions about it all: sad, hopeful, bitter, guilty, relieved, confused, and honestly...  terrified ... I think the scary answer is that only time will tell. What is known is that Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have been struggling with this crisis a long time and any numbers reported are underestimations. For Nigeria, it's so new and yet has the potential to be disastrous....

Over the past few months, there's been a lot of talk about Ebola in West Africa. And this has sparked a lot of responses from Africans, both on the continent and in the Diaspora. It's also sparked a lot of responses from the Western world--many that have felt ignorant and upsetting to me as an African. My biggest pet peeve has been how the media has portrayed it. I was in journalism for a while, and I've always found a strong distaste for articles that were more about sensation than about clear, objective reporting. Most of the articles I've read have promoted ignorance and a "panic" about Ebola versus really presenting the reality of the disease and how it's being handle. An example: West Africa has a lot of countries. And only 4 of those countries have been dealing with Ebola. Two of the four have contained it and it is no longer a problem. Yet all the articles simply just reference "West Africa."  As a doctor, my sister has had lots of th...