The Mettaboy Report

Few emergencies in modern history have cumulated an endless list of frightening superlatives in such a short period of time. Within a couple of months, the West African Ebola Virus Outbreak (EVO) has been qualified as: public health emergency of international concern, extraordinary event, uncontrollable, fatally inadequate, exponential in growth, unprecedented, catastrophic, worst ever and greatest peace time threat. Since the outbreak ten months ago, it is only now that the international community seems to wake up albeit in panic to the ravaging scale of the epidemic. The response so far, has revealed an epic failure of collective actions at the global level for addressing African health challenges— something akin to a ''Rwandan moment'', when the international community fatally underestimated, misread and dithered to avert genocide. But a lack of farsighted leadership by Africa has not only mishandled the epidemic but also squandered a chance to show the world ...

The Indian Ocean island nation of 22 million people is famous for at least two things: its unique pristine biological diversity and its recurrent political turmoil— the most recent which ended last January with the election of a new President. But there’s another striking feature about Madagascar which barely gets notice even by its professional watchers: the relations between political crises and its business cycles. Economic growth and politics apparently operate at cross purposes. Growth spurts generates political crises in cyclical fashion.  Economic prosperity in Madagascar displays a destructive impulse: elites fight over its spoils in a way that end up sinking the whole country into periodic political turmoil and recessions. The Madagascar Cycle As the country slowly recovers from one of its most damaging political crisis which started in 2009, the newly elected President, Hery  Rajaonarimampianina seems to want do the right things. Sustained economic growth rema...

A surprised press conference held last month  by Emory University Teaching Hospital, stands out as a rare bright moment in the fight against an uncontrollable Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.  ZMAPP, an untested serum-based therapy in humans was successfully administered to two American health workers who were later declared free from the virus, which has killed more than 1500 peoples. While more trials were still needed to ascertain the effectiveness of the drug, the public announcement raised hopes for a new front in the fight against the ravaging epidemic. Besides treatments for its debilitating fever, bleeding symptoms including palliative care as well as public health measures to contain the disease-- such as quarantining -- no licensed cures so far exist. This most deadly outbreak kills on average six out of ten patients, one more than all previous outbreaks together since 1976, when the virus first emerged. The number could climb to nine out of ten patients, at t...

The staggering accumulation of crises in recent months seem to have overshadowed the ongoing sectarian bloodbath between the Muslim and Christian communities in the Central African Republic. Over 2500 peoples have died since January, and more than one million  of the 4.5 million population displaced internally,  by violence whose roots are complex but have however been simplified and reduced to a religious cleavage  by international community and most analysts. This is the first time, religion is source of violence in the country, and the worst ever in its history.   On scale of brutality, the conflict in the CAR is notorious and compares with few in the continent in terms of catastrophic levels of violence, too. At the core, the civil war is not a fight about the right way to God as widely viewed.  But the escalating levels of violence so far, is an end of a long progression which started by a complex interaction of factors, in particular, deteriorating...

The Ebola outbreak has hit a panic button at the core of the political, social and economic establishment across the continent. In a herd-like fashion, one country institutes a blanket ban, triggering others to follow, apparently with no careful assessment of unintended consequences.  Some countries like Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have even extended the reach of their bans to all travellers from West African countries. But the most significant heavy-handed ban so far is by Kenya, the fourth largest economy and major hub of air travel in the continent. Those extraordinary, fear-based measures only go to demonstrate the wide distance between policy and evidence in Africa. The targeting of people from the affected countries instead of Ebola is misguided and a non-starter in the chain of death of the disease, which will only end up in not only doing harm to those beleaguered economies but to all countries, even those who have put in place bans. Targeting people instead o...

                                        The raging outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa, a strain never seen in the region, is scary indeed. To see and read about medical professionals who are supposed to know more than anyone in the society, fall helplessly in the line of duty is very frightening. And when the media love for anything drama is added; fear goes off the roof. Ebola is another of Africa’s brand-killers. And it seems to take the shine away from the story, of a continent that has been rising unprecedentedly in a post-financial crisis era, where economic growth is in short supply. Even the recent historic US-Africa Summit and its outcome were overshadowed by the world-wide panic over the viral contagion. Two African Heads of States of the affected countries even declined an opportunity to take pictures with the first  American President of African blood— preferring ...