[user104658]

Originally Posted by Cherie

No that is not difficult to understand at all, and I don't know why you think it would be, if Africa can go it alone by all means feel free to go ahead, I don't see Liberia or Sierra Leone turning away the Army or the NHS staff or any other countries staff though, neither do I hear of more economically sound African countries stepping in to help, maybe if they were seen to be actually doing anything the charities might back off? To my mind this is about preventing this disease spreading to other counties and stopping it in its tracks, it has nothing to do with the African economy or lack of

It has everything to do with the lack of African economy because parts of Africa have been kept under a boot-heel, a boot heel that things like Band Aid inadvertently add weight to. Again, it's not "all Bob's fault lol", they just further the perceptions with their ham-fisted messages - they provide charity but damage the prospects of any real economy developing.

If these countries had had proper sanitation and healthcare systems in place a year ago, Ebola would never have spread beyond a few isolated cases. Even if we do "stop Ebola in it's tracks", the further damage done to these economies ensures that nothing is going to improve any time soon, and it's only a matter of time before there's some other viral outbreak or disaster.

It's not that anyone should just "do nothing" but these are complex, intricate issues that need to be addressed, properly, to stop things like this from happening anywhere in the world. It's not OK to just let it happen over and over and then release a knee-jerk charity song and say "Everything's going to be OK! We're sending you some lovely money to help you, as you must need help to survive in your putrid hell-pit of a continent!". It's clumsy, and the good done in the short term is outweighed massively by the long term damage to these countries' images.

Like I said; it's like a bull in a china shop. It's trying to perform an appendectomy with a claw hammer.