Effect of Ebola on children

Ebola has ravaged West Africa, leaving about 4500 people dead out of more than 9000 registered cases. Three of West African's poorest countries: Liberia (>2000 deaths), Guinea (>800 deaths) and Sierra Leone (>1200 deaths), have borne the brunt of the epidemic. Of the total number of deaths caused by Ebola, 22% have been that of children. An estimated 8.5 million children and youth, under 20 years of age live in Ebola-affected areas. 2.5 million of them are under the age of five.

Apart from the death toll and the number of people hospitalized, Ebola has also had a crippling effect on the children left behind. Thousands of children have been orphaned by the epidemic. They have had to undergo the trauma of witnessing their family members taken away by health care workers in protective suits. The fear of infection has led to neighbors and families shunning these orphans, which in some cases even involved the use of violence. With the growing number of Ebola deaths, increasing numbers of children will be left destitute with their lives shattered.

As hard as it to believe, the indirect effects of Ebola might actually might prove to be more deadly than the virus itself. After the end of the civil war in Liberia in 2003, the under-five child mortality was 110 per 1000 live births. By, 2012, this figure had dropped to 75. This improvement is now threatened by the epidemic, as the outbreak of Ebola has left fewer hospital beds for women to safely deliver their babies. This is just one improvement that is at risk.

Rumors have been flying around Liberia that hospitals have been injecting people with the Ebola virus. This, combined with the closing of many health care facilities has led to a dramatic decrease in childhood vaccination rates. Before Ebola, 97% of babies were getting their routine vaccinations. This number has fallen to just 27%, resulting in children dying from diseases that could have been prevented. The vast amount of money that has been siphoned into fighting Ebola has left less money available for tackling the problem of ensuring timely vaccination.

Ebola has also wrought havoc in the education system. In Liberia alone, the closure of public and private schools as a result of the outbreak, has left 1.4 million children without access to education. Little has been done to encourage the continued education of school children while schools remain closed. Small community initiatives have sprung up in some regions, but no official government program exists. UNICEF has recently partnered with Liberia's Ministry of Education to broadcast educational programs via radio. It is hoped that this scheme will prove effective.

Schools in Liberia fulfilled other purposes apart from providing education. Many schools provided children with security, food, medicine and counselling. Children out of school are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and illness. Discussion have recently been initiated to decide what protocols need to be in place for schools to reopen. Compound all this uncertainty with the fact that the education sector in Liberia was slowly recovering from the effects of a civil war that ended a mere 14 years ago. The Ebola epidemic could undo all the progress that has been made in the interim.

All is not lost, however. Organizations such as 'More Than Me' are putting up a heroic fight against Ebola. Before the Ebola outbreak, 'More Than Me' transformed the lives of girls from the West Point slum in Liberia, by providing them with education, health and social services. The outbreak of Ebola, however, forced the school to shut down. Instead of remaining passive during this dangerous time, 'More Than Me', recognized the danger to the education system caused by the epidemic, and put itself in the front line of fighting the disease.

It has partnered with the Ministry of Health to observe children who have been in contact with Ebola, for a quarantine period of 21 days. It then reintegrates the Ebola-free children into the communities from which they have come. The children who show symptoms of Ebola are transferred to Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs).

More than Me also supports local leaders with information and materials they need to share health education, and identify Ebola cases within the community at an early stage. Katie Meyler the founder has said, "If awareness workers need rain boots, we’ll get them rain boots. If another team hasn’t eaten that day, we’ll feed them. And we’re expanding our work to five additional Ebola hot zones in and around Monrovia." It has partnered with the Ministry of Health to make sure people who show symptoms can be taken to ETUs as soon as possible.

It also manages home health care teams to provide care for people who suffer from ailments other than Ebola. Finally, More Than Me tries its best to meet an important life-saving or dignity-giving need through financial assistance and rapid supply disbursements that cannot be filled through regular channels. The following article provides more information about what it's doing: http://www.vogue.com/3306747/ebola-crisis-liberia-photo-journal

Given the enormous risks and opportunities of working in Liberia at this time, it is wonderful to see organizations like 'More than Me' making such a difference!

'Responsible business means business first, responsibility second'

Yesterday, the 2014-2015 MBA students at the Said Business School, Oxford were invited to the Oxford Union to attend a debate on 'Responsible Business means business first, responsibility second'. The speakers were professors at the School, and successful business women and men.

The proposition stated that the purpose of business was to do business first and be profitable. They further stated that businesses were firstly and fore mostly responsible to their stake holders, and their responsibility to wider society came second. The opposition on the other hand, stated that businesses did not operate in a vacuum but was part of society and therefore had a duty to society at large in their day-to-day operations.

In my opinion, the debate last night did not have any clear points of clash due to the ambiguity in the definition of 'responsible' and 'stakeholders'. The proposition seemed to be saying that a business had to be 'responsible' to its 'stake holders' (shareholders/customers/people affected by the business??) in order to be profitable- it didn't seem to have an ambitious definition of 'responsibility'; while the opposition provided example after example of how 'irresponsible' businesses fared far worse than other companies operating in a particular sector.

I thought that it was really the last speaker for the opposition that presented the issue as having two sides by being clear about what he meant by 'responsible business'. For one, he talked about the 'business' of prostitution and how the application of the proposition's definition of 'success' in terms of immediate profitability to this business was repugnant. He further made the point that no business operated in a vacuum. Decisions taken by businesses affect a wide section of society and therefore businesses are obligated to be responsible to society at large. Although I thought these points were interesting, I felt that the arguments made needed to be broken down further.

During the audience-question answer session an interesting point was made about how big IT companies such as CISCO were only able to give their technology away for free for a good cause (to the Government of India in order to develop the Aadhar Scheme that would enable policy makers to identify people in need of aid) BECAUSE they put profits first and therefore had the resources available to 'do good'. This begs the hypothetical question- if CISCO had given more importance to their responsibility to society, would the good/impact created be more than by giving away technology as charity? Should this question be asked? Does this CSR act as a smoke screen and divert attention away from the real rotten core of the business? Does this kind of CSR really benefit shareholders- in making investing in the company attractive? Or should a CSR strategy in keeping with the fundamental business strategy of the company be developed with the ultimate motive of increasing profitability? Do businesses need to take a larger ethical stance? Is the debate really about the rationalization and kind of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that needs to develop rather than if CSR is needed per se? How should small businesses approach CSR?

When I looked up the definition of 'responsible' online, I found the following definition: 'Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.' The Organization of Responsible Business which provides this definition is very clear when it states that it is pro-business and it is essential that remaining profitable is a business' first responsibility. However, it goes on to say that profitability should not be the be-all and end-all and that the 'how' question is also vitally important. But CSR was not always rationalized in this way. An article in the Harvard Business Review implicitly defines 'responsible business' as businesses which worry about long term impact. This definition of responsibility has come a long way from where it started in the early 1900.

This article Lee(2008), traces the evolutionary history of Corporate Social Responsibility. In 1917 Henry Ford tried to defend reinvesting Ford Motor's accumulated profits on plant expansion while slashing the price of Model T vehicles, stating that 'Business is a service, not a bonanza.' This view was not received well by shareholders,or the court. 80 years later when Henry Ford's great-grandson made the same argument, he not only was NOT slapped with a law suit, but also received wide spread support from share holders. What changed?

The article suggests that in 1919 the concept of social responsibilities of a business was couched in a vaguely moral framework so that shareholders could not see how it served this served their interests. In keeping with Adam Smith's market philosophy, businesses saw no reason why they should produce public good services. Intellectuals such as Milton Friedman also strongly opposed CSR because of the danger perceived in shareholder funds being misappropriated in the name of social responsibility. Friedman also did not believe that businesses had the skills or the knowledge to be able to solve social problems.

What changed post 1919 was the rationalization of CSR in terms of the tight coupling between CSR and the financial performance of businesses. The article goes on to state that in a survey conducted by The Conference Board, nearly 90% of corporate managers reported that their companies treat CSR as a core business principle and 70% reported that their company had a corporate foundation that advocated social causes. This change happened because of the number of environmental and safety regulations that came into effect in the 1960s as well as the growth of consumer rights movements. It was in the 1970s however when a clear linkage between CSR and the financial performance of businesses was established with the growth in empirical research. It is to be noted that a greater spending on CSR does not ALWAYS correlate with a better financial performance.

Frederick(1994) posits an interesting theory of how the past morally embedded framework of CSR which led to all sorts of tough decisions ( 1) The kind of operational framework for CSR 2)The institutional mechanism of CSR, 3)Trade-off between economic and social goals and costs, 4) The inherent vagueness of the moral underpinning of CSR) has given way to something he terms as 'corporate social responsiveness' (which he terms as CSR2), where businesses respond to social pressures. This is sometimes termed as soft law. With this idealization, businesses need only worry about how far they have to give in to these pressures, the tools they can use (the micro in-firm strategy and the broader macro/institutional strategy). This thus serves to take the moral heat of businesses, and allows them to think in terms of strategy etc. Simon Zadek in an article in the Harvard Business Review cited earlier says that businesses usually go through a cycle of 'defensive measures, compliance, managerial, strategy, civil' when responding to change. Each stage of this response cycle is interesting. Sometimes businesses can 'comply' with standards and move further in the cycle in spite of the public believing a stronger commitment is required. An example of this provided in the article is the debate on what food companies need to do to tackle the problem of obesity. Michael Porter has written that the problem with this approach is that responding to societal pressure puts businesses on the defensive. This is not always a positive thing.

Clearly, however, social responsiveness is not the same as social responsibility. Some sections of society could be left behind. In addition social movements do not always result in change. This article provides 6 reasons why change is so difficult. Some of the problems lie with consumers. Consumers dont like paying more and that is something that needs to be addressed. Thus in my opinion, the usefulness of responsiveness as opposed to responsibility could have been a question around which the above debate had been framed.

Where in this debate do B-Corporations and social entrepreneurship ventures come in? B Corporations state that environmental and social goals are important to them and that profits are not their ONLY driving force. It is extremely interesting to see how they fit in, into this current debate.