Non-Knowledge Increasing Risks

Non-knowledge increasing risk

People living in poor countries often deal with poor education affecting their knowledge, which makes them vulnerable.

Several health organizations, such as the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières, have been experiencing threats from local people who believe that they are the ones who brought the disease. These locals are actually driving away the ones that offer help. Even though it is understandable, because they see people entering a health care facility, and coming out of it dead, this local distrust is an example of how people’s lack of knowledge can have an impact on their risk and vulnerability.

Another example, in which non-knowledge is affecting the risk of getting infected with the Ebola virus, are

The disease is still going on in parts of West Africa, but you never hear anything about it. Since the threat to Western people has decreased to almost none, there is no more interest in reading or hearing about Ebola. Even if the media would write about it, people are not interested in the fact that there still are a few cases somewhere in Africa, far from home.

Mental health

There are different ways of looking at a disaster. For most of ‘us’, western people, the Ebola outbreak is something that happened in the past. For the people living in the centre of the outbreak, there is no ending to the disaster. Many of them have lost more than one family member, and some might still deal with sickness. The disaster will be in their memory forever.

People who are infected by the virus, are placed into quarantine. Imagine what, being isolated from your family and friends for a few weeks, can do to your mental health. In many cases, patients see a different health care worker every day, wearing some kind of ‘space suit’ to protect themselves, which gives an even bigger feeling of being alone and being

Media coverage has a great influence on guiding the global response to such a disaster. Even though the media can have positive results, such as increased funding and awareness, media coverage of the Ebola outbreak has led to a lot of unnecessary panic amongst the public. Media coverage could have been used to help the people in Africa, but instead, it mostly focused on the few US and European patients which shows the vulnerability of people living in a developing country.

Something else that contributes to their vulnerability, is the fact that with being poor, often comes a lack of knowledge, which in the example of the burial practices clearly led to a higher rate of infection. Also, a lack of infrastructure makes it difficult for a country to be able to treat its patients.

Due to stigma and being quarantined, patients have a high risk of becoming depressed or developing symptoms of PTSD. Regarding infectious diseases, mental health is something that is often overlooked, but needs to be addressed in order to effectively treat the patients and overcome the global