October 21, 2014, - 5:25 pm
Guess Who Won’t Go Back to Ebola Liberia – Obama Should Take the Hint
You know who refuses to go back to Ebola-riven Liberia? Most of its doctors–who are in the U.S.–AND the country’s First Son, also a doc. Yup, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s son, Dr. James Adama Sirleaf, is staying put in Georgia. They won’t leave America to go back to their infected country. So why are we letting in flights from their country? And yet President Obola still won’t take the hint.
Who Knows Better: Him . . .
Hell No, He Won’t Go: Liberian First Son, Dr. James Sirleaf Refuses to Go to Liberia, Stays in US
. . . Or Him?
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Sunday said “the whole world has a stake” in preventing an unfolding catastrophe in Liberia, calling on nations to provide more medical experts and supplies to confront the exploding Ebola epidemic. But illustrating the difficulties of heeding that call, her own son, a physician, has stayed in the U.S., saying he can do more for his country there than at home.
“It is the duty of all of us as global citizens to send a message that we will not leave millions of West Africans to fend for themselves,” Mrs. Sirleaf said. In line with that message, the president in late August fired state officials who refused to come home from abroad to help Liberia battle Ebola. At that time, however, her son, Dr. James Adama Sirleaf, was returning to his family in Georgia, after deciding to pull his medical training group out of his homeland because of mounting risks to doctors there.
He is hardly alone. Officials and physicians here say far more Liberian doctors are in the U.S. and other countries than in the country of their birth, and that their absence is complicating efforts to curb what has become a global health crisis. Even before Ebola, there were only about 170 Liberian doctors in the country, and colleagues say many of them weren’t actively practicing. At least four of them have since died of the virus. That shortage has prompted repeated pleas from the Liberian government for more foreign doctors to join the fight.
Foreign governments, including the U.S., have begun to respond, in part to prevent a tide of new Ebola infections from entering their own countries. The U.S. has sent 400 of the up to 4,000 military personnel it will deploy to build 17 Ebola treatment units, the first of which is scheduled to open this month. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has 40 staff members on the ground.
So, let me get this straight: their doctors are smart enough to stay here, while we sent 3,000 troops over there to catch the disease Liberian docs are staying here to avoid? Yup.
Dr. Sirleaf runs the emergency room at a hospital in Albany, Ga. He heads an effort to ship protective gear to medical workers in Liberia, but hasn’t returned himself since a 10-day trip in August as the virus was spreading out of control. “The symbolism of me going there and potentially getting Ebola when I have a nine- and a seven-year-old at home isn’t worth it just to appease people,” said Dr. Sirleaf. “I’ve made a commitment not to live in Liberia for many reasons, and I think my contribution means more.”
Uh-huh, you keep tellin’ yourself that. I’m not buyin’. I would respect this guy more if he just said, “Hey, I don’t want to get it. Hell no, I’m not going back.”
In 2007, Dr. Sirleaf founded Heartt Foundation—an acronym for Health Education and Relief Through Training—to recruit medical specialists and residents to spend a month practicing in Liberia and teach at its only medical school. Heartt sent 70 doctors in 2009 alone to Liberia to train students. . . . But Heartt’s last team of four doctors left Liberia in March, just as cases of Ebola were surging. JFK hospital, where Heartt physicians worked, appeared ill-prepared for the coming epidemic, Dr. Sirleaf said. The risk to doctors and trainees, who hadn’t confronted Ebola before, seemed unacceptably high, he said. . . . The head of JFK’s emergency room and the chief of its internal medicine department were among the first Liberian medical workers to die from Ebola. Liberians dubbed JFK hospital “Just For Killing” for the carnage Ebola was wreaking within.
Again, this is the son of the President of Liberia, the medical doctor son of the President of Liberia. And he refuses to go home. Why on earth are we letting his countrymen–who might be deathly ill–in?
Remember, Ebola Air is a one-way trip. And it causes those who weren’t even on the flight to quickly reach their final destination.
Do we really know better than Dr. Sirleaf does? Nope.
Exit question: why didn’t the reporter who interviewed him and his spokespeople ask him about banning flights from his very sick homeland?
Answer: because you and I both know he’d either 1) refuse to answer or 2) give the same answer you and I would give:
Keep those flights from landing on American soil!
***
By the way, why did we make it so easy for Liberian docs to leave their country and remain in our own? Read this about stupid U.S. immigration policy for those with medical credentials (which, by the way, also brought many Islamic terrorism-supporting docs within our borders to infest and procreate).
Tags: Air Ebola, Block Ebola Flights, Dr. James Adama Sirleaf, Dr. James Sirleaf, Dr. James Sirleaf MD, Ebola, Ebola Air, Ebola Flights, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Health Education and Relief Through Training, Heartt Foundation, James Adama Sirleaf, James Adama Sirleaf MD, James Sirleaf, JFK Hospital, Just For Killing, Liberia, Liberia's First Son, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
And just as disturbing, virtually everyone in the Democratic Party agrees with him, except for those politicians in close elections.
It has taken some getting used to to see grown and accomplished men and women act like starry-eyed adolescents when the welfare of all but themselves is considered. The infantilizing and narcissistic qualities of left-wing politics should never be underestimated.
Little Al on October 21, 2014 at 7:03 pm