I found the images of speaches by the liberian president to be out of place and not compelling. I also found the apparent lack of hard numerical and scientific data in the film to be offputting.
I looked up
1. International response to the Ebola epidemic
- from http://ebolaresponse.un.org/liberia
I learned about how the UN coordinated various organizations, including UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and the WHO in their individual persuits to end the transmission of ebola in Liberia, including providing food, hygene kits, medical supplies and care, and how within 3 months of international joint operations the transmission rate of ebola was deacreased to zero.
2. Health Care in Liberia
Source http://www.aho.afro.who.int/profiles_information/index.php/Liberia:Index
While physical access to primary health care has improved dramatically across Liberia, from one health facility serving an average of 8000 population in 2006 to one health facility per 5500 population in 2009, it is still not nearly enough, and the existing resources of medications, supplies, and facilities can and do become overwhelmed when faced with new challenges.
3. Liberain public health response to the ebola crisis.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/world/africa/ebola-response-in-liberi…
As international support came into the country at the outbreak of ebola, Liberian public health structures and political institutions were unable to cope with the new strains and were rendered ineffective. Meetings between liberian health officials and international organizations that were lauded to the public as being "effective" were consistantly bogged down in politics, resulting in the inefficient implimentation of programs and the poor distribution of despritely needed resources.
The DHS embarked on the process of researching, collecting, and compiling data for this report durring the summer and fall of 2011.
I found the images of futility and violance in this film to be most compelling, especially when police forces were turned against the people, and a person was shot in the leg, causing an apparent open fracture, which he later succumbed to. The images of death and effected children were obviously used in this film to tug at "heartstrings" to promote an emotional response.
The corrective action suggested by the film is to strengthen public health networks and response capabilities in liberia by means such as constructing more hospitals and health facilities and training more doctors and nurses to take care of the large numbers of effected people in epidemic situations.
This report outlines specified services and payment rates for these services to be performed by community paramedics. The contents of this report are the result of extensive research and consultation with a workgroup conveined by the DHS consisting of representatives of emergency medical service providers, physicians, public health nurses, community health workers, and local public health agencies.
Liberian emergency responders are portrayed in the film as being completely overwhelmed by the situation at hand and unable to cope with the nature of the illness, people's innitial denial to the extreme communicability of the disease, and the sheer number of patients. Most predominantly, first responders are illustrated by 2 abandoned ambulances on the side of a road and by the story of a woman saying that an ambulance was called to a dying pregnant woman and they ended up leaving her on the side of the road for an ebola crew to respond to, which came too late.
More scientific data and perspectives from public health officials could be used to broaden the perspective of this film and change its purpose from being an emotional film to being a more educational film.
In 2011, the Minnesota Legislature passed and Governor Dayton signed SF 119, creating a new certification for Community Paramedics. The law included language directing the Department of Human Services to create this report.
The stakeholders discribed in the film was the general population of Liberia. They had shared experiances of seeing the effects of ebola, innitially being in denial of its severity, then finally seeing the entire liberian public health system be overwhelmed and fail by an apparently unstopable and horrifying disease. The people effected needed to make difficult decisions about how to avoid contracting the disease, how to protect their families, and how to deal with the emotional strain placed on them by the epidemic.