Public health officials knew Ebola was coming. They know how to defeat it. But they’re blowing it anyway.
ld, you still just don't get it. The Ebola epidemic that is raging across West Africa, killing more than half its victims, will not be conquered with principles of global solidarity and earnest appeals. It will not be stopped with dribbling funds, dozens of volunteer health workers, and barriers across national borders. And the current laboratory-confirmed tolls (3,944 cases, with 2,097 deaths) will soon rise exponentially.
To understand the scale of response the world must mount in order to stop Ebola's march across Africa (and perhaps other continents), the world community needs to immediately consider the humanitarian efforts following the 2004 tsunami and its devastation of Aceh, Indonesia. The U.S. and Singaporean militaries launched their largest rescue missions in history: The United States alone put 12,600 military personnel to a rescue and recovery mission, including the deployment of nearly the entire Pacific fleet, 48 helicopters, and every Navy hospital ship in the region. The World Bank estimated that some $5 billion in direct aid was poured into the countries hard hit by the tsunami, and millions more were raised from private donors all over the world. And when the dust settled and reconstruction commenced, the affected countries still cried out for more.
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A seriously hard-hitting article by a very good journalist with a particular interest in infectious diseases.
And she's right: Ebola was stopped, not once, but a number of times, as long as 38 years ago, in settings that are as or even more desperate in terms of poverty and lack of medics and medical resources.
The problem is, intervention did not occur soon enough this time, or on a scale sufficient to stem the increase in infections that inevitably followed introduction of the disease into urban settings.
It is a matter of amazement to me, that with the ever-present threat of pandemic influenza AND the recent emergence of MERS, that the WHO should have its "...miniscule epidemic-response department slashed to smithereens by three years of budget cuts".
Seriously: faced with diseases that can jump out of camels, or bats, or rats literally anywhere, WHO has to have budget cuts??