A medical worker sprays people being discharged from an Ebola treatment center in Liberia. (Associated Press/Jerome Delay)
A Liberian government official is sympathizing with Texans’ fear and anger about Ebola.
“We are not blaming people who feel the way they feel,” Gabriel Williams told The Dallas Morning News. “You know, you wake up one morning and you see your whole life being threatened when you feel that haven’t done anything. You’re at home and someone just came from nowhere and brought this on you.”
Liberia experienced the same plight, said Williams, spokesman for the small West African nation’s embassy in Washington.
“The virus did not emanate from Liberia,” he noted. “Someone brought it there and it spread.”
The World Health Organization says Ebola first appeared nearly 40 years ago in two other African countries, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The virus is named for a Congo river near one of the initial outbreak sites.
The current epidemic began in Guinea before “spreading across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia,” WHO says. There have been “more cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined.”
Williams urged people not to judge Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was diagnosed with Ebola shortly after arriving in Dallas. He died last week at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where at least two nurses contracted the virus.
People in Liberia and the U.S. have accused Duncan of flying here despite having had close contact with an Ebola victim and knowing he might be infected. Duncan’s relatives have vehemently disputed that.
Williams said the matter remains unclear and added: “I would not jump to conclusions on any matter relative to whether or not he concealed information.”
Liberia can’t afford to look back at such questions now, the spokesman said. About 4,500 people have already died in West Africa, the majority of them in his homeland.
“We have a house on fire,” Williams said. “The focus now is seeing how we can concentrate our efforts on containing this fire.”
Asked if had any message for the people of Dallas, he responded: “We are one people.” Freed U.S. slaves founded Liberia in the 1800s, and “10 of our past presidents were American born…. The blood connection between us, nothing can cancel it.”
Williams said he hopes that “we can learn from this disease to see one another’s interests. There’s a lot we have in Liberia that can benefit the United States. We may be impoverished … but we are very well endowed in natural resources. Why don’t the Americans join us to build our human resources, our infrastructure?”
His parting thought: “We live in a global village. And this Ebola is telling us that we have to pay attention to the well-being of everywhere else in the world.”
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