The Tribune

SINCE July, the Ebola story has dominated the international airwaves, especially in the United States when it was learned that a Minnesota resident returning home to his Minnesota family collapsed after getting off a plane in Lagos. He later died in Lagos. He had been infected with Ebola in Liberia where he had worked as a top government official in the Liberian Ministry of Finance.

Then there was the American doctor who contracted the virus in Africa while treating Ebola patients. He was flown back to the US where he recovered.

Thomas Duncan, who left Liberia for the US a healthy man, shortly after arriving in the US discovered he had a fever and was dead two weeks later from the virus. He was the first patient to die in the US from Ebola, and a health care worker, who attended him, is now the first person to catch the deadly virus in the US. Her case is a mystery because it is claimed that she had followed all the protocols. It was feared that in the coming days more cases of Ebola could emerge. And then there was a rumour that turned out just to be a rumour of a case in Florida.

The Bahamas learned of its own scare, not through its government, but through a Facebook report that went viral. It wasn’t until September 17, that Dr Perry Gomez was put in a position where he had to publicly mention the unmentionable — it was not true, he said, that a patient died in Doctors Hospital after contracting the Ebola virus. He later made a statement in the House, assuring members that all precautions had been taken to quarantine the patient.

The rumour was in circulation shortly after the American Embassy got a call on Sunday night – September 14 – for a rescue mission for a very ill person on a freighter passing through Bahamian waters. The patient was a 34-year-old Ukrainian, working on the freighter, which was on its way to New Orleans from the Congo, West Africa.

The red flags went up. Congo, West Africa - Ebola!

No wonder rumours started, the mention of Africa obviously set-off a backroom panic. The patient died two days later. And, although blood work at the hospital confirmed that he died of malaria and not Ebola, the sceptics, suspicious of a tight-lipped government, chose to believe otherwise. And so the rumour spread.

Up until this point, no one in authority — although the Bahamas has open borders – had said anything about Ebola or what precautions were being taken to prevent an Ebola-infected patient slipping into our country.

In Kingston, Jamaica, for example, the Ministry of Health scheduled a July 31 meeting to explain to its citizens the country’s response “to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa”.

“Health Minister, Dr Fenton Ferguson, says the situation is being closely monitored based on Jamaica’s open borders and as a result steps will be taken to prevent a possible spread.”

Also in Jamaica a large, crude poster in Creole was posted on the side of a forest road warning: “Attention Ebola – Ne Touchons jamais, ne manipulons jamais les animaux trouves mort en foret.”

In other words, don’t touch or remove an animal found dead in the forest.

Jamaica had no scare, but being part of the world, its government was vigilant, and kept its citizens informed of what it planned to do should the problem arise. Not so the Bahamas.

In fact, a letter published in The Tribune on October 8, from a gentleman, who wrote that he had a relative in a health care profession in the Bahamas, set alarm bells ringing. He wrote that as a result of an in-depth conversation he had had with this relative, he was told that “we were grossly unprepared”. He claimed that the Bahamas was late in ordering required hazmat suits that health care professionals require to ensure their own safety.

He was also concerned that there had been no public announcement from government on the threat of Ebola and what a person should do if they thought they were infected. He invited the government to address the public on the subject as quickly as possible

He said the person with whom he had spoken told him that during the official meetings “the Ministry of Health has put on in response to Ebola, there was a general feeling in the room that no one really knew what was going on, and sort of a general belief that Ebola is not coming here so don’t worry about it…”

In the same edition of The Tribune, respected cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon, Dr Duane Sands, also wrote a letter for publication. “The possibility of a person who has been exposed to Ebola virus who then travels to the Bahamas is remote, but real,” he wrote. “A number of countries have instituted precautionary approaches to mitigate this possibility. The Bahamas has been slow to execute an effective policy at our borders.” He felt that the “Bahamas should lead the region in the planning and execution of an effective strategy to address this public health matter.

“The programme,” he continued, “should be implemented within the next few days. There is no better strategy than a proactive clearly planned and executed approach to this real public health threat.

“We are a leader in regional tourism,” Dr Sands wrote. “We ought to lead in our approach to this threat while providing reassurance to our people and visitors,” he concluded after giving our readers useful web sites to research to get information for themselves.

In today’s Tribune, Health Minister Dr Perry Gomez has at last announced that government has prepared a 42-page document — on which, he said, it has worked long and hard – in collaboration with its private and public partners to deal with significant public health threats such as Ebola.

“It is a thick document about 40 pages,” said Dr Gomez, “and so anybody who is out there espousing that the ministry has not done anything is not telling the truth.”

How can anyone tell the truth, if government keeps its secrets behind closed doors? Here is where a Freedom of Information Act would have been useful to pry those doors open.

As the old folks used to say: “Closed mouth catch no flies!” By the same token, neither does it inspire confidence, especially when silence persists in what could be a pending crisis.