Sir, – Various reporters and commentators in The Irish Times have, rightfully, pointed out that the Ebola outbreak in west Africa contains lessons for all of us, beyond the obvious immediate need of containing the disease.
Those lessons are that we can no longer afford to treat social and economic problems abroad as of little relevance to us here in Ireland.
If the world had not ignored the inadequacy of healthcare and public services in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the situation would not have snowballed into a major global crisis, with ramifications for us here. Furthermore, if the global community had acted sooner, the response to the Ebola outbreak would have required far less resources.
It is accepted wisdom that prevention is always better than a cure. Yet, when it comes to global crises, the public and our politicians prefer to act only in the face of (media covered) disaster.
This week 30 years ago, the world was alerted to the famine in Ethiopia. Michael Buerk’s broadcast of a “biblical famine” went viral and galvanised celebrity-led action of an unprecedented scale – obscuring the fact that aid agencies had alerted the world months earlier, but, in the words of BBC correspondent Mark Doyle “famines are sexy, predicting them is not”.
It is high time that we as citizens and policymakers accept the fundamental interdependence of our societies and lives. We cannot continue to treat our economic and social challenges here in Ireland as somehow divorced from realities in other parts of the world.
An investment in the type of structures and initiatives that build resilient societies is clearly preferable to “fire-fighting” after poverty and insecurity have erupted into a full-fledged crisis.
Ebola, Ethiopia, climate chaos and Rana Plaza in Bangladesh remind us that as citizens of Ireland, we must acknowledge that we are citizens of a global village, where situations of injustice, poverty and institutional weakness are a problem for all of us. – Yours, etc,
HANS ZOMER,
Director,
Dóchas,
1-2 Baggot Court,
Lower Baggot Street,
Dublin 2.