The Médecins Sans Frontières warning that the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo threatens regional stability is, I suppose, meant to shock us. But who, in the name of reason, is still capable of being shocked by the predictable collapse of public health in a corner of the world long abandoned to its fate? We have seen this play before.
The virus emerges from the forests, the international community makes a lot of noise, a few aid workers fly in, and then the whole affair sinks into the bureaucratic morass of failed states and humanitarian theatre. The real scandal is our collective amnesia. Ebola is not some novel horror; it is the persistent symptom of a deeper rot: the systematic underfunding of health systems, the grotesque inequality that leaves entire regions without clean water or basic clinics, and the cynical geopolitics that treats human life as a bargaining chip.
Compare this to the Victorian response to cholera: yes, it was flawed, but at least there was a sense of collective responsibility, a belief that something could be done. Today we have the science, but we lack the will. Regional stability is indeed threatened, but not primarily by the virus.
It is threatened by the poverty, corruption, and neglect that allow the virus to flourish. Until we stop pretending that these outbreaks are unpredictable acts of God and start treating them as what they are: a predictable consequence of our own moral failure, we will continue to recycle these same headlines. The Congo will burn, and we will look away.
Call me cynical, but I prefer the term realist.
