Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Do I really care about Ebola? Do you? Does Oxfam?

The sign of seriousness is seeing a crisis early – and following up after it's finished

It’s strange how quickly we all forgot about Ebola. Speak for yourself, you might say — and I will. Until a friend sent me a report this week on the progress of the epidemic, Ebola had, I’m sorry to say, almost faded from my mind. The report contains good news: where the outbreak was worst, in Liberia, there are now just five cases left. Ebola treatment centres are shutting down, unneeded — and I was delighted but also ashamed. I have been to Liberia and written about it and I had thought last year that I cared tremendously about its fate, more than others, perhaps. My heart bled even as my mind ran rat-like to my kitchen to make an inventory of canned goods.

I thought I cared — but did I? The uncomfortable truth, looking back, is that my concern swelled and faded with the media coverage. Out of print meant out of mind, though I know that no news does not necessarily mean good news.

We rats like to spread the blame, so I’d say what’s true of me is true of most of social media’s #carers, and most politicians, too. All that breast-beating when it suits a tweeter to advertise the global scope of their compassion; all that cash suddenly announced when the PM wants rid of the dead-weight of aid money. Thereafter, a simple, terrible lack of interest.

Nor are charities exempt from fair–weather caring. An honest effort from a charity has to be about more than just raising dosh. They get no points for posting pictures of dying African children and taking donations, because that’s as much in their own interests as in Africa’s. ‘Crisis’ funds are rarely ring-fenced, and can be liberated later for the more exciting work of lobbying politicians and writing pamphlets.

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