The Ebola Network
Generally, when we think of networking and the influences behind our forming of networks, we think of it in a more deliberate fashion. We meet and purposely spend time with and eventually befriend people we enjoy being around. When looking for jobs, we look for employers we think we’ll enjoy working for, and employers look for candidates who they think will fit well in the company. On the other side of the spectrum, we create and actively maintain “distasteful” networks with people we disagree with or people we don’t like. We deliberately go out of our way to avoid that jerk in lecture, and we’ll regularly scheme with all of our friends how to make the class bully pay for taking your lunch money. In all of these scenarios, we choose who we network with, regardless of it being a positive or negative relationship. But what happens when we’re forced into a network by influences we can’t control? What happens when we’re plunged into a network that we never even considered being a part of? That is the situation of the few Ebola survivors in the U.S.
By contracting Ebola and then surviving it, these eight remarkable people were not only forced into and are a part of the highly exclusive network (though not necessarily in a positive way) of Ebola patients, but are easily the most recognized and well-known members. With great power comes great responsibility, and in line with the quote from Spiderman, the majority of the Ebola survivors have participated in assisting in the treatment of the virus in Africa. One survivor, Dr. Kent Brantly, has traveled around the country telling others what needs to be done to continue to fight Ebola. Dr. Rick Sacra, after recovering in the Nebraska Medical Center has gone back to Liberia several times and has been “quite vocal about his vision of establishing a residency program for future Liberian doctors”. From a networks standpoint, these survivors are serving as bridges between Ebola patients and the rest of the world. By returning to Africa to help with treatment, going around the U.S. to talk about Ebola, doing interviews with the media, and even writing books, these survivors bridge are helping to bridge the gap between the resources to treat Ebola and the people who need them. As Dr. Craig Spencer wrote in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in March, “For the U.S. media, it [Ebola] ended a week later, when I walked out of Bellevue Hospital and the country was officially Ebola-free. But the real Ebola epidemic still rages in South Africa.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/02/health/ebola-outbreak-survivors-rewind/index.html