In Europe, Fear of Ebola Exceeds the Actual Risks
After more than a decade working as a charity director setting up schools in West Africa, Miriam Mason-Sesay got an unpleasant surprise recently when she returned to Britain and could not find a school willing to teach her own 9-yearold son.
Ms. Mason-Sesay said, her son, Kofi, had always enrolled for short periods at a primary school near Manchester, in northern England, but this year the school refused to take him because the parents of other pupils were frightened: They did not want their children sharing classes with a boy who had spent time in Sierra Leone, one of the three countries hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic.
Across Europe, as in the United States, a virus that, outside Africa, has infected only a handful of people, all of them medical workers in hospitals treating Ebola patients, has stirred a wave of alarm that doctors and psychologists say reflects the insecurities of the modern mind far more than any significant danger to public health.
The result has been a string of unfounded Ebola scares, which in some parts of Europe have led to entire buildings being sealed off and the people inside being held so they could be examined for symptoms.
“People think that Ebola is lurking behind every tree and bush and waiting to get them,” said Ms. Mason-Sesay, the British charity director. She added that the banishment of her son — who had been certified healthy by doctors — pointed to a disturbing mood of fear fueled by ignorance and misinformation.
In a statement, Elizabeth Inman, the principal of St. Simon’s Catholic Primary School, said she had made a “pragmatic decision” not to admit Ms. Mason-Sesay’s son.
Adaptado de: <
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/world/europe/in-europe-fear-ofebola-
far-outweighs-the-true-risks.html?ref=health> Acessado em
18 de outubro de 2014.
Ms. Mason-Sesay, the British charity director,
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