Ontario pastor Dave Carrol witnesses to how loving our neighbour is not a local-only proposition.
Earlier this year I visited a rural Kenyan health clinic. Standing in front of me was a medical officer of health who was fighting on the frontlines against diseases that we in North America just read about. The sign on the wall behind her showed that this facility and the equipment in it exist in part because of Western-world national partnership. It’s a partnership that of late has been perilously waning.
She looked at our group, and without a performative note, she said, "We’re scared. I don't know what we're going to do."
I was in the Eldoret region of Kenya with World Vision Canada. I went as a pastor and a community leader. I’d actually lived in Africa before, but the goal of this mission was to see the tangible impacts of Canadian investment. I found a health system doing extraordinary things under extraordinary pressure, staffed by people of deep skill and deeper commitment. I saw firsthand how our Canadian dollars equate to real change in lives.
Areas of Sub-Saharan Africa had already been navigating compounding humanitarian crises before Ebola re-entered the conversation. Conflict, displacement, food insecurity and chronically under-resourced health infrastructure have created conditions where resilience was less a strength than a survival strategy. And now Ebola is spreading again in a region where the systems designed to contain it were already at their limits before experiencing a decline in Western partnership.
A fragile health system does not fail gracefully. The medical team knew this. That's why she didn't know what they were going to do.
Let me compare the situation of her health system to the one here in Canada. In Brantford, Ont., I’m a director of the Brant Community Healthcare System Foundation. Foundations essentially pay for everything that isn’t nailed to the ground in our hospitals and play a critical role in the building of new facilities. The money comes from you and me. Even in Canada, hospitals are not all government-funded. Partnership is required.
When I stood in the Kenya hospital nursery, I saw an infant radiant warmer that World Vision had helped provide. It was the same kind of equipment we were fundraising for back home. In Brantford we have a community that rallies, but in Kenya, when resources run dry, there is often no failsafe. We must mind the gap between our local generosity and our global reach.
What struck me wasn't guilt. It was the visceral revelation that caring here and caring there are not competing impulses. Canada has historically shown up for communities like hers – through organizations like World Vision, through development funding, through sustained commitments that rarely make the news but do change outcomes.
That tradition, and societal norms going forward, are being tested and established right now. Canada faces a moment of decision. The gap is not an abstract. It is measurable, and people are trying to stay alive inside it. For Canadian Christians this moment asks something specific of us. We have never genuinely believed loving our neighbour is a local-only proposition. Love doesn’t specify proximity. The call to care for the vulnerable is not a suggestion based on geographical convenience.
Ebola, on top of an existing emergency, at the exact moment when the architecture of global response has been weakened, needs to be the fire alarm that we finally hear. Canada has the opportunity to choose compassion over complacency by advocating for those on the frontlines and ensuring our global commitments remain firm.
Dave Carrol is a pastor, broadcaster and community leader based in Brantford, Ont. He serves on the BCHS Foundation board and travelled to Kenya in February 2026 with World Vision Canada.