Bringing a soapy twist to the “Ice Bucket Challenge” that has swept the world in recent weeks, Ivorians are raising awareness about the deadly disease outbreak in west Africa with a new “Lather Against Ebola” campaign.
People in Ivory Coast do use ice in their variation, but have added a good head of lather to alert others to the need for hygiene to ward off the Ebola epidemic raging in neighboring countries.
The campaign has already flooded Twitter and Facebook feeds in the region with the French hashtag “#MousserContreEbola” helping raise awareness about a virus that has claimed more than 2,400 lives in neighboring Guinea and Liberia, as well as Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Instead of cash donations, participants are encouraged to donate bars of soap and bottles of antiseptic.
The original Ice Bucket Challenge is a hugely successful campaign in which people challenged their friends to film themselves pouring ice water over their heads. It has raised millions of dollars worldwide to fund research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after a renowned US baseball player.
Ivory Coast, which has shut its long, porous borders with Liberia and Guinea and banned flights from the affected nations, has yet to report any cases of Ebola, but panicking locals are resorting to measures like drinking salted water or eating onions in the mistaken belief they prevent infection.
The Soap Bucket Challenge is the brainchild of Edith Brou, one of the country’s most prominent Twitter users, who decided it would be a good idea to “tropicalize” the ice bucket trend. She got the ball rolling last month with a video of herself being drenched on the balcony of the small online marketing firm where she works in the commercial capital, Abidjan.
“Against Ebola, you need good hygiene,” she says in the video before a bucket of ice-cold soapy water is dunked on her head.
It gave her a tenacious cold, she said, but was rewarded with almost 4,000 hits on the video.
Brou challenged three famous bloggers, including La Rigueur Bino — real name Nouho Bamba — who claims to have 150,000 followers.
His contribution — in which he wore a smart suit and ended up throwing himself in a swimming pool with a suitcase in his hand — garnered more than 52,000 viewers.
“I knew that jumping into a pool would create a buzz,” said Bamba, who works for a telephone company. “Today, even children need to understand what Ebola is.”
With 1.4 million Facebook accounts in the country and hundreds of thousands of mobile phones, the Internet has played an increasingly important role in politics and society in Ivory Coast.
With Ebola, bloggers have a new opportunity to show their influence. One of them, Israel Yoroba Guebo, has even come up with a song, Stop Ebola, that is being used as the waiting tone by one telephone operator.
They have made their presence felt over numerous issues in recent years, including the negligent death in April of a young model left untreated at Abidjan’s Central University Hospital after an assault, and the New Year’s stampede outside Abidjan stadium last year in which 61 people died.
Social networks also proved a powerful resource during the violence that followed the disputed election in 2010, when more than 3,000 people were killed in five months.
A hashtag #CIVsocial was used on Twitter to help coordinate relief efforts and share information.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing