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Chapter 1: What are the challenges faced by Sherpas on Mount Everest?
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This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. Welcome to The Fifth Floor from the BBC World Service. With me, Farinak Amidi. The BBC World Service broadcasts in 45 languages around the world. Our job here at The Fifth Floor is to bring you the best of those stories in English and also to get you closer to the extraordinary work our journalists do.
This week, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak continues.
Early on Sunday... I declared a public emergency of international concern over an epidemic of Ebola disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I'm afraid, like any human being, because we have children at school and they still come into contact with a lot of people. Once they come home, they can infect the whole family.
Ebola is a frightening and deadly disease, killing on average half of those infected and spreading rapidly without containment measures. So how do BBC journalists report from the centre of an epidemic? With me is BBC West Africa journalist Emery Makumeno, who has been reporting from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the Ebola outbreak.
Moussa Sanghari, country director for Sierra Leone for BBC Media Action, who led public information campaigns in the country back in the 2014 epidemic. Camila Mota, journalist with BBC News Brazil, who reported the country's Zika virus outbreak. Wow, what a team. Welcome to the fifth floor. Great to have you all experts here. So reporting on COVID-19.
an epidemic can quickly gather apocalyptic overtones. We might hear words like ground zero, patient zero, and we usually have conspiracy theories spreading not only locally, but even globally. So Mary, I want to hear from you because you are on the ground reporting this epidemic right now. What are you hearing and what are you seeing?
Well, here in the DRC, let's say that the Ituri province in the eastern part of the country is the current epicenter of this new, also rare, Budubingyo Ebola virus. But you also have North Kivu and also South Kivu. These are neighboring provinces still in eastern DRC. One of the other things which is coming very often is, of course, fortunately, the conspiracy theory.
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Chapter 2: How did Hilary Dawa Sherpa survive after being lost for six days?
Yeah, absolutely. I think journalists can report safely in the midst of an epidemic. But I think the key aspect here is providing them the basic knowledge and training in terms of keeping themselves safe. At the end of the day, they also get infected, which can also increase the risk in terms of reporting on epidemics.
And Camila, you?
I'd say it can be scary. Maybe scared is not the best word, but cautious. And I think it's a good thing to be cautious. You know, whenever I'm covering, I see myself in situations like that. There's always like butterflies in your stomach right before you jump in. But just the second before I jump in, because when you're there, you're working and things change.
And it makes me think, because here in Brazil, we cover a lot of urban violence as well. So we go to a lot of places. in which there are armed groups. So I'd say it's kind of a similar situation, even though the comparison might sound crazy. But still, you know, you're kind of, okay, yeah, let's do this. And then when you're in, you're in.
And Mary, in situations like this, people want to know, where did the virus come from? Why did it spread? How did it spread? And they're looking for answers. How do you report on a situation like this if you don't have the answers?
Well, the fact that I am here in the country, so I have quite a wealth of contacts to reach in order to verify some of these claims or allegations. So the bottom line is that we are able to reach the people in the response and also the authorities and trying our best to stick to what has been verified coming from officials themselves and also from our own sources on the ground.
It's not easy, but it is our responsibility to inform accurately the rest of the world.
I want to hear from the rest of you as well, because you've all reported on different kinds of epidemics. Like, Mathias, what about you? Have you been in a situation that you were looking for answers but really didn't find answers?
I think with the recent case of hantavirus in Ushuaia, in Argentina, we went to Ushuaia to cover how this virus got into a cruise ship. And suddenly we started to read in the international press, even in the local press, that the outbreak started in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, in a landfill full of garbage.
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Chapter 3: What role do Sherpas play in Everest tourism?
Camila, does that resonate with your experiences as well?
Yeah, definitely. And I was thinking, I was actually thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic. The memory is still very fresh. As Emery was saying, we reached out to scientists, to doctors, to authorities, but sometimes they're still figuring out along the way. So there's a lot of hit and miss. And I think the COVID-19 was a humbling experience for journalists because I remember thinking,
reporting, you know, saying to people that we should bathe our groceries in alcohol, because scientists were saying that to us. And then a couple of weeks later, we were like, maybe not. Things have changed. So I think it's also part of the challenge, right? We have to be even more skeptical than we are normally.
Yeah. And it's so important at times like this to to give the correct information. And that's why I want to want us to hear a bit from this public information drama by the BBC media action for the audiences in Sierra Leone in the 2013 Ebola outbreak. It's called Mr. Plan Plan.
I guess plenty. Come by you plenty. At a sale. That's very catchy, Musa.
But can you tell us why Mr. Plan Plan was so important?
Yeah, I think that was something very interesting. I'm a in terms of the response in Sierra Leone at the time, because one thing that we noticed was the fact that increased knowledge and awareness about the virus does not necessarily translate to action.
So you might meet people who understand the symptoms of the virus and all the sciences behind it, but at the end of the day, they are not taking action in terms of protecting themselves, their loved ones, families and communities. So we came up with Mr. Plan Plan from the point of view that how could we inspire behavior change and action?
So this short drama series is more or less like creating conversations at individual and community level, household level for people to have a plan in a situation where if there is an outbreak of of Ebola, either in your community or your household, what are some of the practical steps you are expected to take? So you don't have to wait until the virus comes.
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Chapter 4: How is the Sherpa community impacted by increasing tourism?
Minulla oli tärkeää pohtia kehittymistämme tulevaisuudessa. Kaikki myyntiin tarvittavat työkalut, kuten varaston suunnittelu, ovat kätevästi dashboardissa. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu shopify.com-sivustolla.
Do you think the world, the wider world, will stay with stories like this in your experience?
That's a good question. It's usually, as you said, the attention span is really short. And with the Zika virus epidemic, it was actually really interesting because the world was really watching Brazil at that time because Brazil was on the run up to the Olympics, right? The Rio Olympic Games happened in 2016 and the outbreak happened in 2015 here in Brazil. So Everyone was watching.
And then Brazil declared a national health emergency. Then the World Health Organization, right, declared a state of attention because the disease was spreading further away from Brazil in dozens of countries. And the thing which is really interesting is
At first, authorities thought that the Zika virus was a benign disease because you'd get a rash and then you had fever and it wouldn't be that bad. But then doctors in Brazil started to realize that a lot of babies were being born with microcephaly. Then they thought there might be something wrong.
And the images were so strong, you know, of kids with the tiny heads and everything and the suffering of the family. So everyone was watching Brazil. 2,000 babies were born with microcephaly at that time with congenital Zika infection. So, but then in 2017, cases dropped sharply, probably because of the development of herd immunity. And the world, you know, there's so much going on in the world.
People stopped paying attention. Yeah. And that's why 10 years later, last year, we actually went back to some of those families to see how these kids were.
Talking about the spam of the attention, I had an incredible discussion with the health authorities in Tierra del Fuego because when we arrived to Tierra del Fuego, we arrived on Friday and I started to talk to local authorities to give me an interview during the weekend so we can have your version. And they say, no, we don't work during the weekend. We start on Monday.
And I said, look, the spam of attention of this story will die on Sunday when the last patient from the ship is evacuated. So on Monday, nobody will care and everybody will think that the outbreak started in your province. So if you have an alternative version, I would suggest to give us an interview during the weekend. Because people on Monday will be talking about something else.
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Chapter 5: What recent events highlight the need for environmental awareness on Everest?
And until then, you know, doctors hadn't put together that maybe those two things were correlated, that the microcephaly cases were due to the Zika virus infecting the mothers. So it was in Brazil. In August 2015, in the northeastern part of the country, which is one of the poorest parts of Brazil, but then doctors started to realize maybe these two things might be correlated.
And then it started like wildfires, you were saying before, but within the Brazilian scientific community. And Brazil is such a large country. But doctors and scientists were exchanging information, you know, and working together to try to understand what was going on.
And then the world was watching Brazil, not just because of the disease, but also because part of the answers were coming out from here.
Mary, I want to come to you now because you're on the ground right now. And are there community mobilizations happening in the DRC at the moment?
Things are starting to be put in place when it comes to community owning this response. It is only now. This is about 27 days into the response this Thursday. There's a lot of mobilizations of community in order to own and also use leaders of the community to convince the people that reporting early also increases the chance of being healed or to survive Ebola.
And it's only starting now, but the resistance is still there. I also wanted to add one more element that as the World Cup is starting, of course, there will be a big concern over here. This response is in need of over $500 million and not much has been disposed according to the response teams. And now the world is focusing on the football, the biggest event.
So the fear here is that commitment or pledges might be And the people as well might be in shortage of the necessary funding in order to contain this outbreak. Though the government seems to be positive that they've had to deal with Ebola for this is the 17th time for the DRC. But money is needed and more international mobilization is needed for them to contain it.
When we're talking about reporting, do you also get a chance to talk about underlying issues, giving more analysis, for instance, about the relationship between poverty, war, disease, all of these things? Is there a capacity in your audiences for absorbing that kind of reporting as well, Matthias?
I think you have different steps. I mean, in the first situation, people are scared that they can get whatever they are afraid of. I remember with COVID and now with Hantavirus. So for me, this first moment is the face of, can I get it? Or how can I avoid getting it?
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Chapter 6: What lessons can be learned from the Sherpa experience regarding tourism ethics?
We cannot... more or less like say prevent another outbreak, but the response system can be a lot better. And there will also be a mechanism where we're able to address some of those endemic diseases that people suffer with on a daily basis. You know, because if you take Ebola away, people still die of malaria. You know, probably more people die of malaria than Even Ebola.
There are other diseases as well that are also affecting people. You have pregnant women who are also facing challenges in terms of delivery, lack of ambulances. The problem is just so massive.
And I think we have to take a hard look at some of those issues, even though at times it's very difficult for you to treat all those in the heat of an emergency because you want to focus much more on providing life-saving information to audiences. But I'm sure there's a need for us to look at the whole health care system and see how media can also...
be able to hold government accountable to improve those services.
Yeah, interesting. Camila, you know, as Musa mentioned, you know, we are having more epidemics, more outbreaks more frequently these days in today's world. Do you find that it's become more important to actually talk about these interrelations and underlying issues in our reporting?
Definitely. And I think that audiences might be paying more attention to that because of the COVID pandemic. So much was talked about how these things are intertwined, you know, climate change and deforestation. I mean, if you take forests away, mosquitoes will reproduce and invade your city. And that might be a problem. And I think the more we go through these traumatic experiences online,
the more maybe people are open to consuming that kind of coverage. And specifically on the question about all the underlying issues, poverty and other things that come together and are also part of the problem. I also think that there is, I mean, with the experience with Zika,
Whenever you have an answer for unanswered questions, even if it comes years after the fact, people are paying attention to it because these have been such traumatic times that people are like, oh, wait a minute. And we have a specific example because in Brazil, pregnant women in the northeastern part of the country were the most affected. more than in any other part of the country.
So when there were the first hypothesis on why that happened, people were like, oh, wait, I remember that. Explain it to me. So that's still, the memory is still fresh, which is a good thing for us, right? And we're talking about the attention span being so short nowadays. I think maybe there are these windows in which we can still, you know, access and connect with audiences.
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