Liz Szabo

USA TODAY

Over the past week, people around the world have been incensed at the prospect of euthanizing dogs belonging to nurses infected with Ebola.

One of these dogs was even the focus of a hashtag campaign on Twitter.

If only the world could muster that sort of compassion on behalf of human beings.



I have yet to see any petitions in support of Abrahim Quota. He's a beautiful 5-year-old boy who survived Ebola but lost both of his parents.

Abrahim's eyes stare blankly into space in a photo taken Monday outside an Ebola treatment center in Liberia, even as an aid worker attends to him.

Ebola has made orphans of nearly 4,000 children in West Africa. The virus has afflicted nearly 9,000 people, killing at least half.

I'm starting to wonder if Ebola needs a poster child like Abrahim. There's just something about the human brain that allows us to feel profound sympathy for an individual, even as we turn our backs on the masses.

Pope Francis asked the world to care for "our brothers and sisters struck by the Ebola epidemic" back in April, one month after the outbreak was first detected. By then, the disease – which had first appeared in Guinea – had already spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In June, USA TODAY reported that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the largest ever reported. Bart Janssens of Doctors Without Borders warned that the disease was already "totally out of control."

Yet the world didn't really awaken to the danger of Ebola until July, when an Ebola patient was healthy enough to board a plane bound for Nigeria. That's when many people realized, for the first time, that Ebola and other infectious diseases are only a plane ride away.

Instead of responding with compassion – and committing to stopping Ebola at its source – the world mostly reacted defensively, closing international borders, canceling flights, pulling ships out of port.

It's as if everyone was hoping that, if the world could just hide from Ebola long enough, we could wait out the epidemic ravaging West Africa with no ill consequences for Western countries.

Now, with two Dallas health care workers hospitalized with Ebola, many Americans are again reacting with fear, terrified that they will become infected.

People seem more interested in the latest titillating conspiracy theory than learning the science behind Ebola. That science clearly shows that the risk to the general population – basically, anyone who isn't caring for a critically ill patient -- is incredibly low.

But the longer that Ebola rages in West Africa, the longer the USA will be at risk.

The first patient with Ebola showed up at a U.S. emergency room after the number of Ebola cases topped 7,000. How many cases will show up here when, as some estimates predict, cases top 1 million?

It is our failure to care about Africa – unless our own safety is at stake – that puts us in danger. People think they can ignore Ebola unless it turns up in Dallas. But ignoring Ebola is what allows it to turn up in Dallas.

Americans may think it makes sense to turn away from Ebola. After all, the average person runs away from a burning building, not toward it. But as every firefighter knows, someone has to put out the flames.

That realization is finally changing the way world leaders are responding.

The USA is sending 3,000 troops to West Africa, and other nations are providing support. As U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power recently said, "Instead of isolating the affected countries, we call for flooding them, flooding them with resources."

Consider what American compassion can accomplish. In 2003, President George W. Bush launched the landmark President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. That program has not just prevented the spread of AIDS; it has built public health systems across Africa, saving more than than 1 million babies who would otherwise have been born infected with HIV.

It took a long time for people to change the way they felt about AIDS and to embrace those suffering from the virus, rather than shun them.



For the sake of kids like Abrahim, I hope it won't take as long for Americans to understand why we need to care about Ebola.

Szabo covers medicine for USA TODAY.



