Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, Liberian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Nataka Moore, Psy.D. Adler School Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology
Clinical psychologist Nataka Moore, Psy.D., is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Adler School in Chicago. Her areas of specialty include international and community psychology.
I had the opportunity to have breakfast with the Honorable Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, the Liberian Minister of Foreign Affairs during his recent visit to Chicago. He came here after attending the first U.S.-African Summit, in Washington D.C. last week with President Barack Obama.
During breakfast, we talked about the impact that Ebola is having on Liberia. In the past few months, more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola in West Africa. Nearly 300 of these individuals were from Liberia. The minister discussed how, initially, the people of Liberia did not believe that the outbreak was real. They considered Ebola an East African virus, and wondered how it became an outbreak in west Africa.
After Ebola took the lives of highly recognized health care providers such as Dr. Samuel Brisbane, chief medical doctors of Liberia’s John F. Kennedy Medical Center, a leading hospital, people began taking the outbreak seriously. However, according to Minister Ngafuan, people have gone from disbelief to straight panic.
According to the Minister, Liberia is a country without protective equipment such as gloves, gowns, and masks, within its healthcare settings taking care of Ebola patients. The consequences are more deaths–from health issues that are not Ebola. Many Liberian hospitals and clinics have shut down because healthcare providers are not equipped to care for patients without risking infection and possible death themselves. Already, it is reported that more than 40 healthcare providers have contracted the virus. This has created a situation in which other diseases such as malaria are not being treated. People are dying because they are unable to get treated for health issues that generally do not have to result in death with proper treatment.
The country is in a state of emergency. This basically means that the normal rights that people have, like freedom to trade around the borders, go to school, and assemble in large groups, have been restricted, in order to contain the virus from spreading. This has created economic impact on Liberians. Many people cannot go to work. The government has had to halt some economic development plans, so it can address the Ebola outbreak. This is a difficult situation for any country to bear, but especially Liberia.
Liberia has celebrated 10 years of peace after 14 years of civil war that completely devastated the country. After the war, the country did not have a government or protective systems such as a healthcare system in place. It has been reported that 40 to 60 percent of its people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that 50 to 70 percent of women were sexually assaulted during the war.
A lot of work was done to restore the country’s infrastructure and raise the spirit of its people to be invested in this hard work. In the last 10 years, Liberians have worked hard at fulfilling the promise to rebuild their nation stronger than it was before the war. Liberia is the first African country to elect a woman as president. Just last year, Liberia’s medical school reopened its doors and started training its first round of future medical doctors, to address the scarcity of trained medical professionals in the country.
In addition, the government has made it a priority to support the training of mental health professionals. Currently, trainees are receiving three months of mental health training to address issues related to substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder. There are fewer than 100 mental health professionals for more than 4.19 million people. Currently there is a dearth of master’s and doctorate-level mental health clinicians as well. I and two other Adler faculty, Tiffany McDowell and Cadmona Hall, will travel to Liberia early next year to train mental health professionals at JFK Hospital as a way to partner with Liberians in building a stronger mental health system in their country.
There is a lot of work ahead. Yet the United Nations has acknowledged the work that already has been done through its Millennium Development Goals Report, which assesses African countries’ progress toward goals such as eradicating extreme hunger and promoting gender equality. For many Liberians, this Ebola outbreak comes at a very difficult time as the scars of its civil war have not yet healed, and they face yet another national emergency that could undermine the advances made in the past decade.
After breakfast discussing all of this, Minister Ngafuan and I attended a town hall meeting to which many Liberian Americans came to hear firsthand the news of what was going on in Liberia. I asked the Minister: What was being done to address morale and tap into the resilient spirit of the people? I asked this because in times of panic, wounds from a civil war could reopen–eroding the sense of peace that has driven the rebuilding of the country. Ebola, although a physical disease, can also impact the mental health of the people. Outbreak is traumatic not only to the individuals affected with the disease–it also can be mentally and spiritually traumatic to the entire country. Many people with PTSD may see the outbreak as another traumatic event even if they are not personally affected by the disease.
The Minister agreed that the government and many NGOs and religious organizations have been mindful to address this. Many people are coming together, he said, to spread the message that they have overcome the war and much tougher, darker times in their recent history. They are a resilient people, and they can and will overcome Ebola. This was very compelling to me. The Minister was essentially referring to the power of instilling hope within the people, which is an antidote to panic and apathy. The Minister agreed that attention to the mental health and well-being of Liberians is important in effectively addressing and reducing Ebola’s impact on the citizens and the country.
From my time with the Minister, what I knew for sure was that while hope is an influential and potent force, it needs back-up. People feel hope when they believe things will happen in the future because real effort from society or individuals will ensure it. We can apply this lesson here in Chicago, where so many youth do not feel hope–and thus we are dealing with our own epidemic, of violence. Many of our youth do not feel hopeful that they will receive a proper education. They do not feel that they will be employed and make meaningful contributions to their community and society. They do not have hope that they will be nurtured and groomed to step into positions as future leaders.
We need to do better instilling hope in our youth, and in collectively working hard to ensure that what they hope for will come to pass. As a society, otherwise, we risk not having a good future in which to look forward. From Liberia to Chicago, from the epidemic threat of Ebola to that of violence, we all need to come together to understand that our liberation as individuals are bound to others–and to do the work of hope-raising and making a difference in our collective future.
The Socially Responsible Practitioner 