We flew back from London Saturday, and our flight had a lot of folks from Sierra Leone

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50. You should not be blamed for being concerned and afraid, peacebird

The American citizen who was working in the government of Liberia knew first-hand how bad the health system is in Liberia. When his sister died of ebola he tried to find a way to go anywhere he knew would have better health care, so he left the hospital and flew to Lagos, Nigeria. He went to a doctor and did not tell him he had ebola, then to a Lagos hospital. He died soon after he got there, soon afteras did the doctor and two nurses. One infected person traveled to Port Harcourt. If he had been in a village ebola might have been stopped there. TWENTY ONE MILLION people live in Lagos, FOUR MILLION in Port Harcourt. Thankfully, Nigeria has a public health system better than Liberia; the CDC and USAID helped them to set it up. CDC sent a team to Lagos and Port Harcourt to work out protocols and screening at airports, and seaports. The contact workers had to locate more than 3000 people to monitor. In two weeks they kept the virus from spreading, large numbers of people did not try to leave the country and only eight people died.

Reading what his wife tried to tell people was heartbreaking. "He was so afraid because he knew his country's health system couldn't save him." Liberia was just coming out of a terrible war, trying to build back their public health system with one doctor and a few healthcare workers for FOUR million people, and ebola has overwhelmed and collapsed what they had. Now people are dying from all the diseases other than ebola there for lack of health care. Do we honestly know what we would do? And who can we blame?