Concerning the Ebola Outbreak

Since this topic has been consuming our news cycles in one way or another for the past few months I feel the need to offer my views on the matter. I will ignore the actual human crisis of the outbreak because that is a given and has been covered by news outlets with great depth. Instead I will offer a criticism of the developed world's response to the crisis.

Ever since the Ebola outbreak began, the developed world, which I will refer to as "the West" from here on, has had a stance of distanced concern. However, despite their concern, which is mostly of the economic kind, we have seen little to no actual aid until we saw cases arrive in our respective nations. The US had refused to send any aid of real significance until an African man was admitted to a hospital in Texas. This slow response stems from the inherently racist policies of the US which disregard the developing world unless events in those nations have a profound economic effect on the US or result in the US public getting scared shitless. In the current case the only reason that we seem to care now is that we have seen a case on US soil and the apathetic people of the US are finally screaming bloody murder about "outbreaks."

Everyone must realize that this problem has been going on for a while now and had more drastic aid been given earlier then the outbreak in Western Africa could have been contained before it became a real problem. Instead the international community, led by the West, has systematically ignored the deaths of thousands of Africans because they are considered to not be important by Western leaders. If this outbreak had initially happened in the US or Western Europe you can be guaranteed that it would have been stopped before hitting 100 confirmed cases. Instead we have seen the death toll rise above 4000 and little has been done in the form of considerable amounts of aid. The only nation that has offered considerable aid thus far has been Cuba which sent 165 doctors to help care for Ebola patients and that aid was sent over a month ago back when no body in the West seemed to care about sending more aid.

How can we in the West claim to be compassionate about helping people when in the midst of this crisis we have only sent aid to help a few Western doctors. Even if we as individuals have great compassion for the people affected by this crisis we have not shown much impetus to try to get our governments to help those in the effected areas and those who have raised cries to send aid have had their message fall on deaf ears. It is telling when the US Congress has started discussions about enacting a travel ban before we have begun discussions to send substantial aid.