I am on my way to the country of Mali. The capital, Bamako, has one of the largest mosques in the world, made from mud and earth, and it is very magnificent.
The country is large and the city of Timbuktu is in the north. In 1841, the French Geographical Society offered a 10 000 franc prize to the first non-Muslim to go to Timbuktu and report back. A Scot, Gordon, took up the offer but was caught and killed. This also happened recently to a French journalist, who was beheaded.
Given the unchanged history of this town you may not be surprised to learn that visiting it is not on my bucket list. But I am going to Bamako. Cerebral malaria is endemic in Mali, as is hepatitis A and B. The country is also in the Central African meningitis belt and there are cases of encephalitis. All jolly good fun. Now Ebola has been reported. One case – but it is there.
On Sunday past, I was having what may be my last ever braai at my home. Visiting were two mathematicians, one Canadian, the other German. In discussing Ebola, they indicated that it was a problem that could be solved – but it took care solving. I cannot remember the exact discussion and, to avoid inferring that they said things they did not, this is my general memory: by having an Internet generation, we expect Internet type of reactions to problems – swiftness is most prized. Has anybody out there ever received an email where the sender has written: “I sent you an email three days ago and still no reply?”
The expectation of a very swift well-thought-out response to any problem is foolish. Big problems take time. In the Ebola problem, solving the problem is not keeping the infection rate down as quickly as possible – it is to get the infection rate to zero in as short a time as possible. Thus, you must be able to treat people and must first have a place to treat them. There is plenty of open space in the affected countries and the first order is to fly in a whole lot of temporary structures to form treatment clinics for, say, 2 000 patients or more and away from the cities.
The very first plan is to build airstrips that can take the cargo planes to bring in the construction workers and build the clinics. Split the clinic into those not yet ill and those who may yet get ill. Then send out Ebola buses to collect patients. Don’t want to get on the bus? Then we can’t help you.
Initially, you will need many highly protected aid workers to staff the place but, as people recover from the illness, it will be possible to recruit them since they will be immune. Above all, the whole project must proceed – naturally, with urgency but not careless panic. Nobody expects a battle to be won with a single shot in a single day. All of us agreed that the best people to run such a project were engineers. Do not get me wrong – the clinic operations and the treatments must obviously be by medical people – but the construction, operations, supplies and logistics should be by engineers.
I think this because I believe engineers have a certain amount of foresight that comes with their training. Not that medical people do not – but it is better to get an engineer to build and run an airstrip, logistics and a clinic. Give the doctor the facility and let the engineer plan and build.
Inevitably, the result of such an arrangement is that many more people will die as a result of the measured engineering approach than will if the ‘all hands to the pumps’ approach is adopted. The point, I claim, is that the measured approach will end the problem while the other approach may end it, only to see it flare up again. Anyway, that is where I am going – Mali. I am tempted to hack off a piece of the mud Mosque as a souvenir. But then I thought, no, maybe if I do, a local will do that to me.