Cleav­on Raphael

To be or not to be...Car­ni­val 2015.That's the talk­ing point for most Trin­bag­o­ni­ans as we wres­tle with one of the worst dis­eases to af­flict the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, Ebo­la.Not since the ad­vent of the Aids pan­dem­ic has such a cat­a­stro­phe gen­er­at­ed so much de­bate glob­al­ly as na­tions far and wide have fo­cused their en­er­gies in com­ing to grips with a med­ical chal­lenge which has the po­ten­tial of wreak­ing un­told hav­oc.If coun­tries do not suc­cess­ful­ly man­age and con­tain this scourge be­fore it de­vel­ops in­to a re­al cri­sis, cra­paud smoke we pipe.The race is on to find a vac­cine for this virus, which oc­curred in West Africa, and mer­ci­ful­ly so far, while coun­tries such as T&T fran­ti­cal­ly put things in place hope­ful­ly to con­tain its spread, we should take con­so­la­tion in the fact that it has not reached a run­away stage.

That is up to the time of writ­ing (Wednes­day morn­ing). T&T has tak­en the tough de­ci­sion to ban the ar­rival of vis­i­tors to our shores from a few African states where the dis­ease has reared its head.

And while we are thank­ful for be­ing spared its dev­as­tat­ing hu­man toll we share the pain and sor­row that al­most 5,000 cit­i­zens on the African con­ti­nent have lost their lives to Ebo­la. We can­not let our guard down.Pres­i­dent Oba­ma in the US cut short some mid-term elec­tion cam­paign­ing to tack­le this is­sue and while he has ap­point­ed an "Ebo­la Czar" to lead the an­ti-Ebo­la bat­tle, he is re­sist­ing de­mands that he should ban vis­i­tors from that part of the world as one weapon in the ar­se­nal of meth­ods in this bat­tle against a virus which the world must con­quer.Fail­ure to win this one will re­sult in a cri­sis unimag­in­able and even though larg­er coun­tries are de­vis­ing strate­gies to ef­fec­tive­ly chal­lenge Ebo­la, one of the hin­drances is that there are so many ques­tions about this af­flic­tion.

The in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can­not make up its mind whether it is air­borne or not. The At­lanta-based Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol has fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed on new pro­to­cols for health work­ers, in­clud­ing doc­tors and nurs­es, who come in con­tact with pa­tients and peo­ple sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing the virus.Pre­vi­ous­ly the CDC de­cid­ed to stay with the usu­al pre­cau­tions but, with new ev­i­dence sur­fac­ing about the dan­ger Ebo­la was pos­ing, the pro­to­cols were amend­ed.The US mil­i­tary, ac­cord­ing to a tele­vi­sion re­port, has a three-man team at the helm of a project aimed at de­vel­op­ing an an­ti-Ebo­la vac­cine. Ac­cord­ing to the ca­ble chan­nel, if all goes well this project could be con­clud­ed short­ly, but it will take some months, pos­si­bly a year, be­fore the drug could be mass pro­duced; that is, if the vac­cine is suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­oped.

The race is on to beat the Ebo­la clock.I thought about the ban that T&T has im­posed on the African coun­tries and con­trast that with Oba­ma's re­fusal to do like­wise. Both sides have co­gent ar­gu­ments for their re­spec­tive de­ci­sions.I could buy in­to our gov­ern­ment's im­po­si­tion, in the con­text of our not hav­ing the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture to deal with the screen­ing of hun­dreds, pos­si­bly thou­sands of vis­i­tors, and to have done oth­er­wise would, in my hum­ble view, be open­ing our doors to ad­mit such an un­wel­come guest.While look­ing at the news I was sur­prised to learn that this Ebo­la scourge was not some­thing new, as a med­ical pro­fes­sor said he had been re­search­ing it since 2001. So how come he and oth­ers around the world did not know or had no in­di­ca­tion that we would reach this stage to­day? Sad­ly, the news item did not give an ex­pla­na­tion.

The hard fact is we have got there and the Gov­ern­ment has to do what must be done to pro­tect our cit­i­zens from the re­sul­tant dire con­se­quences.I am hap­py know­ing that we are do­ing our best to con­tain and man­age this thing, with sev­er­al de­ci­sive ac­tions hav­ing been tak­en in­volv­ing our mil­i­tary and the Min­istry of Health. Now is not the time to score cheap po­lit­i­cal points, as some politi­cians have al­ready done.It is easy for any­one to bump their gums and crit­i­cise sim­ply for the sake of crit­i­cis­ing, but there are times when we must take off our par­ti­san garb and come to­geth­er for the very sur­vival of all of us.

The virus is sim­ply a mat­ter of life and death. Plain and sim­ple. One politi­cian has called for an ur­gent meet­ing of Par­lia­ment to dis­cuss this dread­ful mat­ter. How­ev­er, we do not need talk at this time. Ac­tion is what is need­ed and this is pre­cise­ly what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing.Cit­i­zens are urged not to in­dulge in our well-known pen­chant for mau­vais langue and the spread­ing of old talk on this very se­ri­ous mater. Get all your in­for­ma­tion from of­fi­cial sources. This is no laugh­ing mat­ter.If Car­ni­val has to be post­poned, so be it.