Ebola's Other Victims: The Orphans the Epidemic Left Behind

by Nomad

As the Ebola epidemic continues to claim lives in West and Central Africa, one of the indirect effect has been the children orphaned by the humanitarian crisis.

What does the future hold for these children? The answer lies in how much help they receive now.

Meet 8-year-old Lamin Borbor, one of the hundreds of orphaned children in Ebola-ravaged Sierra Leone. After losing both parents to Ebola, Lamin's new home is the Interim Care Centre (ICC) in Kailahun town, in the east of the country.  

In a recent news article, Lamin told a reporter for IRIN:

"I was brought here because I had nobody to take care of me. My parents died of the Ebola virus. but I have no fear [because] the people are taking good care of me at the centre."

Meanwhile Sierra Leone's Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs (MSWGCA) and international agencies struggle to find solutions for the orphans of Ebola. Although the Kailahun ICC is being managed by the government. the funding comes from organizations such as Save the Children and UNICEF. 

At this time it is the only center in Kailahun but a second facility for Ebola orphans has been opened last month in Port Loko, in the north of the country. Most doctors consider this to be ground zero for the epidemic in West Africa. At the moment, at least.

So how many children like Lamin are there? The exact numbers of Ebola orphans from all of the stricken countries is hard to place. (That's also true of the actual number of Ebola victims.) Three days ago, one UK charity, Street Child, released a report that estimates that in Sierra Leone alone it has left 7,000 children without parents. They also admit that that's probably a very conservative estimate.

A revised survey paints a far grimmer picture. Accounting for the current death toll, under-reporting of cases within the population, and data reports from local teams, the organization estimates there are at least 20,000 children in the region who have been effectively orphaned by Ebola – left with no-one to care for them. 

It is simply impossible to know. Many children living in rural areas may be unaccounted for, while many others end up on the street or are living with neighbors temporarily. Some parentless families are being raised by older siblings.

In contrast to the aid organizations' estimate, the IRIN news report:

Nationwide, more than 3,400 children have been directly affected by the virus, including at least 89 children who have lost one parent and more than 795 who have lost both parents to Ebola, according to the MSWGCA/UNICEF-led Family Tracing and Reunification (FTR) network. There are no accurate figures for the number of separated children, a spokesperson for FTR said.

Whatever the true figures, it is clear that the Ebola orphan crisis will become a long term social problem for a nation that already has more than its share of problems.

A Failed Test of Compassion: Whatever Ann Coulter has, It's Worse than Ebola

by Nomad

Ann Coulter succeeded in making a spectacle of herself  the other day by calling Africa "a disease-ridden cesspool" and the American doctor who contracted Ebola as an idiot. In the next breath, she dares to mention moral decadence and Christian values.

Like a lot of people, I would like to think I have developed a natural immunity against Ann Coulter and her dreadful attention-seeking declarations. I want to believe that whatever she has- and by the looks and sounds of it, it's quite lethal, I won't catch it.

As any doctor will tell you, reducing one's exposure decreases the chances of infection and subsequent transmission.
So, I do my best to avoid reading or hearing anything from Ms. Coulter. It's not easy. Coulter's the Bird Flu of the Right Wing.  

Three days ago, I read (through a third party) that Coulter scribbled a piece called “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded to ‘Idiocy. "  (That's about as clever as Coulter ever gets, I'm afraid.)

In her article, she criticizes Dr. Ken Brantly, one of the two Americans who has been diagnosed with Ebola. Coulter castigates the missionary for forcing the Christian charities Samaritan’s Purse and SIM USA to pay for him to fly in a private jet back to the U.S. and receive care at “one of America’s premier hospitals.”

American Christians go on “mission trips to disease-ridden cesspools," says Coulter because "they're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots."

American culture is to blame, according to Coulter. Hollywood films, she claims, spread the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence which infects the world.

These do-goers "slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works." Coulter suggests that instead of traipsing into the the jungles of Africa, the doctor could have done so much more good work right here at home.  

 She moaned  “Can’t anyone serve Christ in America anymore?” 

Like so many things that Coulter writes about, this article begins with a false premise and runs wild from that point. Is she trying to claim there are there no Christian charities working inside the US? If so, she needs to do a little more research before picking up her poison pen. 

Here's an easily-found website that offers a list of Christian charities and I assume that most of them work inside the US. (I will not vouch for any of them but that is surely enough evidence to scrap the Coulter article at its inception.)

But perhaps I have misread: is she trying to claim that American-based Christian charities have no business helping the poor outside of American borders? I don't happen to remember Jesus saying anything like that. 

The Bible does say :

To help the poor is to honor God.

For some reason, it doesn't specify the poor of which country or region of the world. A bit vexing, isn't it? There's so many poor people in the world. 

Again the same problem happens in the New Testament. In the Epistle of John, Christians are told that pity isn't enough, We must give help. We must act. Strangely there's no map or border, no advice on how to distinguish who we should and should not be helping.

“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with action and in truth”

Every Christian must speculate for himself why the Book doesn't tell exactly which brother in need is more deserving of our aid. It doesn't tell us at where the borders our compassion for the poor begin and end.