Many celebrities are upset with how slow the world's leaders are responding to the Ebola outbreak and crisis in West Africa.
To protest the slow response and urge leaders to do more, these celebrities came together to shoot a PSA where, instead of acting, they sit in silence.
The ONE ad, appropriately titled "Waiting," urges the world to take more action in West Africa to stamp out Ebola. It features dozens of celebrities, including Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Will Ferrell and Morgan Freeman, silently staring at the camera.
"The world waited too long to respond to Ebola. Ebola is devastating West Africa," says the ONE website. "And every day we continue to wait - for funding to reach the ground, for nurses and doctors to be deployed, for the shattered medical services to be rebuilt— more people die."
Ebola is an often-fatal disease in humans that results in death around 50 percent of the time. The first outbreak occurred in the 1970s and only occurred near remote villages near tropical rainforests. However, this latest outbreak in West Africa has affected both rural and urban areas. Currently, the hardest hit countries are Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Because recent conflicts and violence are prevalent in these countries, they lack appropriate medical care.
Internationally, countries have given millions of dollars to tackle the current Ebola epidemic, which has affected over 14,000 people, but the ground response has been slow.
The ad is part of a new ONE multimedia campaign targeting the Ebola crisis in West Africa. The organization is calling out the world leaders to do more there and help improve medical care in the countries affected so that it doesn't happen again.
"We thought of something silent to cut through the noise and to let it speak for itself," says ONE's chief marketing officer, Roxy Philson. "The world waited far too long to respond. While our leaders waited, many people paid with their lives."
ONE was co-founded by Bono of U2 as an organization working in Africa to bolster political activists and fight diseases, as well as improve agriculture on the continent.
ONE urges everyone to sign the petition on their website to urge world political leaders to commit to ending the Ebola epidemic once and for all.
[Photo Credit: Brandon Farley/Wiki Commons]
