Ebola
I have to admit, I haven’t paid much attention to the news on the Ebola outbreak in western Africa. It feels a long way away and I’ve had a lot going on closer to home which has meant my ability to, well, to put it bluntly, to care, has been limited. But last week I went to a talk by a doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) which began to change that. I was invited by a friend and knew nothing in advance, but given the nature of the topic I was expecting a dry, statistics-filled talk. What we got was very different. The talk was by Dr Gabriel Fitzpatrick, Chairperson of MSF Ireland and it was a very much more personal and intimate talk than I anticipated. He had been working the previous month in Sierra Leone and described the work being done by doctors on the ground. It found it really interesting and thought there might be others who would also find it interesting.