The Precious Perfect blood (Part 1)
You got back from a long day lecture. You took a shower and turned on your radio set to listen to some soothing melodies to take a nap. You heard breaking news and it was a report about a small village in Senegal known as Fatik, where some people have died, strangely from a virus.
It was not the guinea worm infection we already knew. It was a kind that had not been seen or heard before. It was also not influenza, but only three people were reported dead.
The ministry of health was going to dispatch some specialist to the place to investigate the cause of that outbreak.
The first things that came to your mind was:
“Why should people travel all the way from this country to the Senegal because of the death of three people?”
“Why should the government put the lives of faithful Ghanaians into danger?”
“This is probably the way the government is taking to amass wealth in the guise of international relations”. You didn’t think much about it because men die every day.
Coming from Church the next Sunday, you heard another story in the news at 12:00pm in the car you boarded. This time, the casualties were not just three people but four thousand men with an additional two thousand in the hospitals in critical conditions. The whole village of Fatik had been wiped out and experts confirmed that the virus was a strain that had never been seen before.
Unfortunately, the men that were sent to investigate the cause of the virus could not make it. They too died of the virus. The media suddenly found a name for it. They called it “THE EBOLA VIRUS”
On Monday morning, it was the lead story in all the national dailies and social media platforms. It was not now only at Senegal but has spread to Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Guinea, Sierra Leon, Guinea Bissau and Niger. It still seemed far away from Ghana.
Before you knew, you were hearing the news everywhere, including foreign broadcasting corporations. It was there that you heard the pastors and fetish priests giving comments on the outbreak. Some said it was the scourge of God.
The case became interesting when “Angel Prophet Doctor Obinim” came out and claimed the cause of the outbreak as his orchestration to punish those who spoke against him. Everyone was wondering how we were going to contain this.
The president of Burkina Faso announced that he had closed all borders in a way to prevent the virus from entering the country. That night, you decided to tune in to BBC before you go to bed. Tears almost dripped down your cheeks when a weeping Sudanese woman’s words were translated into English.
You needed much information of the case so you tuned in to the 6:00 am news at GBC in the following morning. There was a man lying in a hospital in Ouagadougou. The virus was already in Burkina. Panic strikes. Ghana finally closed all borders but it was too late for that. Within this few hours Ghana was plunge into an unbelievable fear. The virus has entered Paga, Nandom, Bolgatanga, Takyiman, Kintampo and Yendi. Within hours the virus enveloped the whole of the country like bushfire.