Small Caribbean states are in a state of panic over the Ebola epidemic across the sea
By M.W. | TRINIDAD
An ocean away from Africa’s Ebola outbreak, a deep fear of the disease now runs through the Caribbean. The atmosphere recalls the early days of the AIDS epidemic, some 30 years ago. Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar (pictured), talks dramatically of “a new darkness, Ebola.” Her government this month recalled delegates en route to a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in Cameroon, a country unaffected by the current Ebola outbreak.
Her doctors and health workers are demanding quadruple pay and $1.6m insurance polices for joining an Ebola response team. There’s talk of cancelling the islands’ annual carnival. Trinidad and Tobago, along with Jamaica, St Kitts-Nevis, St Vincent, St Lucia, Suriname, Guyana and Belize this month banned all travel from African countries with an Ebola outbreak.
One reason for the level of fear is the rapid spread of chikungunya, a painful viral disease also of African origin which first reached the Caribbean last December. Anyone who has not yet been struck knows a bunch of people who have. Some islands have recorded cases in the tens of thousands. Others have stopped counting. But unlike Ebola, chikungunya is mosquito borne. Once local insects are infected, it is hard to stop. For all its horrors, Ebola will not spread that way if it reaches the Caribbean.
Workers at Trinidad’s state-owned Petrotrin oil refinery have refused to unload a cargo of crude oil from Gabon, which like Cameroon has had no recent Ebola cases. The tanker, Overseas Yellowstone, had an official Trinidad and Tobago clearance certificate. It had moored ten miles off the Gabon coast to take on its cargo. No crew member went ashore in Gabon. “If it doesn’t berth, the refinery will have to shut down,” said Petrotrin’s chairman on Monday.
On October 16th, an (un-named) Dallas hospital lab supervisor was on a Caribbean cruise. There was a fear that she might possibly have handled fluid samples from Thomas Duncan, a Liberian-American who died from Ebola on October 12th. The American health authorities wanted her home for closer monitoring. When the ship made its call in Belize, she and her travelling companion stayed on board, in voluntary quarantine.
The American secretary of state, John Kerry, appealed personally to the Belizean prime minister, Dean Barrow; he asked for the health worker to be taken from port to airport in an Embassy car, then whisked home on a special flight. Mr Barrow came back with a firm “No.” Fear of any association between Belize and a vessel perceived as dangerous prevailed over all other considerations. The cruise ship skipped its next call, in Mexico, and set course for its home port, Galveston in Texas, where a helicopter picked up a blood sample. That tested negative; no Ebola. Everyone disembarked.
Blind panic makes it harder to put control measures in place. Unlike its neighbours, Barbados has no travel ban. The government wants urgently to open a four-bed isolation centre. Their first-choice site is a public clinic near the island’s main hospital. Parents from a nearby Catholic private school are campaigning furiously against that proposal. The tiny defence force has blocked use of the medical centre at its barracks. The opposition leader wants the isolation unit placed at the island’s northern tip, far from the port, airport and hospital.
Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, was founded by former slaves from British colonies in the Americas. Many of its people speak Krio, which is closely related to English-based Caribbean creoles. In the English-speaking Caribbean, many people like to talk warmly of their African roots. But in the current crisis, practical help has come instead from Spanish-speaking Cuba, which has sent 165 health workers to Sierra Leone, with more on the way to Guinea and Liberia.
