The news, when it broke, was of the sort that sends a shudder through the veins of even the most hardened cynic. A six-year-old child, sick with Ebola, was taken from a hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Taken, as it turned out, by a family member, the authorities said, in a moment of panic or despair or sheer bloody-minded ignorance.
And the world held its breath. Then, within hours, the child was found safe. Alive.
Praises were heaped upon the UK medics who had been dispatched, no doubt at great expense, to chase this crisis across the globe. Another victory for modern medicine, we are told. Another reason to pat ourselves on the back.
But permit me, dear reader, to be the wet blanket at this particular garden party. Let us not confuse the rescue of a single child with the salvation of a continent. The child is safe, yes, and that is a good thing.
But the drama, the breathless coverage, the moral preening: it all feels like a dress rehearsal for a much darker tragedy. We treat Ebola as though it were a monster from a Victorian penny dreadful, something that can be vanquished by a team of plucky Brits with a bit of gumption and a lot of funding. Yet the underlying conditions that allow such outbreaks to fester—poverty, corruption, crumbling infrastructure, a distrust of authority that is entirely rational—remain untouched.
The medics who saved this child deserve our gratitude. They are brave, skilled, and utterly dedicated. But they are the fire brigade, not the architects who built the firetrap.
The real question is why we, in our comfortable citadels, treat each new outbreak as an isolated incident, a glitch in the system, when it is in fact the system itself. The child is safe. Long live the spectacle.
But don't expect me to applaud.
