Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence says she is not scared of getting Ebola, in a video that encourages Americans to focus more on West Africans far more likely to die from the dreaded virus.
The actress joined fellow stars from The Hunger Games movies for a short online public service announcement from the Ebola Survival Fund.
The video opens with a montage of clips from breathless US television news coverage of the tiny handful of Ebola cases so far in the United States.
It then points out that none of the eight “American patients” treated for Ebola in US hospitals has died – while in some parts of West Africa only 20 per cent of cases survived.
“A lot of them didn’t make it,” Lawrence said.
Her Hunger Games co-star Josh Hutcherson replies: “They didn’t have a lot to begin with.”
“In Liberia, they had 50 doctors for 4.4 million people,” Hutcherson said, before telling Lawrence: “I know what would happen if you got Ebola.”
“I’d be fine,” she solemnly replied.
Australian star Liam Hemsworth and actors Mahershala Ali, Julianne Moore and Jeffrey Wright also appear in the video.
But the core message came from Harvard medical professor and Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer, well-known for his work in developing health care in poor countries.
Dr Farmer said Ebola patients in West Africa urgently needed IV fluids, electrolytes, food and “many more well-trained West African medical professionals”.
“With high-quality supportive care, the great majority of people in West Africa will survive Ebola,” he said.
Two people have died of Ebola in the United States but neither were native-born Americans.
Worldwide there had been at least 7,800 deaths from more than 20,000 cases of Ebola in the last 12 months.
Most of the cases had occurred in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
In November, another posse of Hollywood stars including Ben Affleck, Vincent Cassel, Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman joined U2 singer Bono in an Ebola video sponsored by the ONE Campaign.
AFP