"We shouldn’t forget that this is global issue and for that the world should be united and fight this new disease instead of blaming and stigmatizing a country just because it's the epicenter of the outbreak".By Gabriel Infante Carrillo
Columnist
In the past few months Mexico has been in the spotlight of international media because of the war against the drug cartels and the increasing violence. March and the first two weeks of April the U.S media gave greater attention because of the state visit of U.S government officials and the official state visit of president Barack Obama, back on April 16th.
When we thought that the attention of the international media was over, the outbreak of the H1N1 flu suddenly appears and once again Mexico was the main headline of the international media. The immediate effects of the health emergency and the media coverage has had a high cost not just for the country’s already deteriorated image, but also the national economy, due to the fact the Mexico City represents 23% of the national GDP, and this being one of the most affected of this flu outbreak and having in account that the economic activity in the city has been paralyzed, this is a hard blow to the economy. Another fact is that the second most important industry for the national economy, the tourism sector has also been affected.
It’s really comprehensive the immediate reaction of many countries to encourage their citizens not to travel to Mexico and suspending flights to the country, due to the fact that the unknown is scary, but that is not a reason to discriminate and mistreat Mexican travelers in other parts of the world, as some local media has reported. This type of action doesn’t do any good, it wouldn’t stop the outbreak. I applaud greatly the decision of president Barack Obama not to close the border, which is one of the recommendation of the World Health Organization. Another recommendation of the international organization is to allow the mobility of individuals.
In some point, is normal the stigma cause by epidemic outbreak to the countries where it arises, but in this specific case is incomprehensive to stigmatized just Mexico; the U.S is number two on the list of confirmed cases of people that contracted the new flu virus. Everyone is wondering why just in Mexico there have been deaths caused by the H1N1 flu, we still have no official answers and is something that the authorities have to clarify it in the coming days. The latest information given by the Ministry of Health is that the 16 people who have been confirmed that they died by the H1N1 flu, due that they had the illness very advanced, because they awaited an average of seven days before they went to get treatment. Another fact is that begin Mexico the first country to face this unknown epidemic it was inevitable not to have deceases. That it is why, once the outbreak was confirmed the Mexican authorities encouraged the population to go see a doctor immediately as soon as they had one of the symptoms. Due to this, during the weekend and the fist days of the week hospitals were jammed In the last 48 hours the number of deceases hasn’t increased and the patients that have contracted the flu virus are recovering satisfactory or they have already recover.
In any way I don’t blame the media for it’s coverage of the H1N1 flu outbreak, on the contrary, this have made everyone take health precautions, but I do blame some governments of other countries that have over alert their citizens. This irresponsible action have encouraged racism in some countries toward Mexicans. We already have many problems over our heads so that now we have to deal with this.
We shouldn’t forget that this is global issue and for that the world should be united and fight this new disease instead of blaming and stigmatizing a country just because it was the epicenter of the outbreak. Today Mexico is the ugly duckling, few years ago was China and who will be next?
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