HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Fear-bola
Keep calm and carry on: ebola is not even nearly
Botswanas biggest health concern.
By Prof KIRAN BHAGAT
On 18 October this year,
President Obama beseeched
the American population
and global community to
stop the hysteria surrounding the ebola virus.
I completely agree. We all
need to be mindful of the
symptoms of ebola and how
it spreads, but we dont need
to panic or freak out. This
disease has spread much
faster in the media than it
has on the ground. This mass
hysteria, fed relentlessly by
the news networks, is based
on nothing more than the
publics unfounded fear.
Forgotten are the millions
of people dying every year
from malaria, tuberculosis,
HIV, and the most common
cause of death in the world
cardiovascular disease. According to the Centre for Disease Control, infleunza and
pneumonia kill more than
50 000 people a year: ten
times more than ebola.
Has the world gone mad?
Do you know how hard it is
to catch ebola? It cannot be
transmitted from human to
human through the air or by
touch (unlike tuberculosis).
Intermingling of body fluids
blood and/or saliva needs
to occur for the infection to
move from one person to another.
The overriding basis for
the spread of this epidemic is

Poverty is the killer not ebola

The simple truth is that ebola
emerged over forty years
ago, but a cure or vaccine
was never developed because
the disease has always been

down to weak public health

systems, poor hygiene and
education. Think about how
people live in countries crippled by extreme poverty like
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone: open sewers, lack
of clean running water and
overcrowding. These are the
conditions in which the virus thrives.
If anything, the ebola outbreak should really remind
us how cruel and unfair
the healthcare industry can
be. If you have money, you
have easy access to all the
treatment youll ever need

6 MAKE YOUR MILLIONS. ITS TIME l Issue #61

confined to poor African

countries. A profit-driven
pharmaceutical industry has
no real incentive to fix this
problem.

in your lifetime. If you dont,

you will be left to die.
Equally, we as intelligent,
free-thinking members of
the public should not allow sensationalist headlines
should to distract us from
what really matters: eating
a healthier diet, exercising
regularly, avoiding alcohol
tobacco - and practicing safe
sexual behaviour. Focus
your attention here.

Prof KIRAN BHAGAT is a cardiologist

and founder of Heart Foundation
Botswana (HFB). Contact Prof Bhagat:
prof@cardiacclinic.co.bw