People play fast and loose with the word “hero” these days. (See: Republican carpetbagger Scott Brown and his courageous battle against government regulations.)
But from now on, this will be the gold standard: Health care workers in West Africa. These people are risking their lives to help total strangers. ProJo staff writer Karen Lee Ziner featured one such exemplar, Dr. Adam C. Levine of Rhode Island Hospital’s Department of Emergency Medicine and Brown University Medical School, in yesterday’s Sunday Providence Journal.
Levine, who also conducts research in global health and emergency medicine, is training local health-care workers and helping to establish an Ebola treatment center in rural Bong County. He is doing his part to stem an outbreak that started in June and that the World Health Organization predicts could well spiral out of control.
“We are definitely behind the eight ball on this,” Levine said Friday in a phone interview. “We’re so far behind the curve in terms of bringing in a sufficient amount of resources to stop the epidemic. All of us here are just struggling to catch up right now.”
They need supplies . . . bleach, gloves, everything. Donate here: International Medical Corps and Doctors Without Borders.