@Kolyo,
I'm not denying Ebola needs to be dealt with - I just don't think the media hype helps the situation. In Australia our government is refusing health workers permission to go to West Africa, with one making a statement that we'd get serious when it got to Asia - clearly a nutsical point of view - if it gets to Asia in plague proportions the battle is lost - that's why Nigeria's success is so important - the sky isn't falling - rational, committed responses are required.
But our concern over Ebola way over Malaria/TB etc is also symptomatic of how much western nations don't much give a feck about black africans - until some white sod dies the same way - or we think we're gonna catch it. This is more than a lesson about disease control.
The acceleration thing is ludicrous. I didn't eat any chocolate last week - today I had two pieces - that's a bazillion percent increase. AAAAAGH.
Sorry got a little silly there.
What got us worried wasn't the acceleration - it was that a couple of white folk got it and returned home (to Dallas and Spain). A bazillian percent increase.
This article better sums up my feelings
Cuba leads fight against Ebola in Africa as west frets about border security
Full Story
The island nation has sent hundreds of health workers to help control the deadly infection while richer countries worry about their security – instead of heeding UN warnings that vastly increased resources are urgently needed
A couple of personally selected quotes from the article
Quote:That a nation of 11 million people, with a GDP of $6,051 per capita, is leading the effort says much of the international response. A brigade of 165 Cuban health workers arrived in Sierra Leone last week, the first batch of a total of 461. In sharp contrast, western governments have appeared more focused on stopping the epidemic at their borders than actually stemming it in west Africa. The international effort now struggling to keep ahead of the burgeoning cases might have nipped the outbreak in the bud had it come earlier.
Quote:André Carrilho, an illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Vanity Fair, noted the moment when the background hum of Ebola coverage suddenly turned into a shrill panic. Only in August, after two US missionaries caught the disease while working in Liberia and were flown to Atlanta, did the mushrooming crisis come into clear focus for many in the west.
“Suddenly we could put a face and a name to these patients, something that I had not felt before. To top it all, an experimental drug was found and administered in record time,” explained the Lisbon-based artist. “I started thinking on how I could depict what I perceived to be a deep imbalance between the reporting on the deaths of hundreds of African patients and the personal tragedy of just two westerners.”
The result was a striking illustration: a sea of beds filled with black African patients writhing in agony, while the media notice only the single white patient.
Quote:“What I’d like to see is a little less hysteria in the US and the UK,” said Andrew Gleadle, programme director for the International Medical Corps (IMC), which recruits health personnel for global humanitarian disasters, as he snatched a breather between shifts in Sierra Leone. “We may get a few isolated cases [in the west] but we’re not going to get an epidemic. We need more focus on west Africa where the real problem is.”
In a companion article in the GW
Ebola crisis: global response has ‘failed miserably’, says World Bank chief
Jim Kim demands $20bn fund and says ‘we failed miserably’ as cases in Spain and US fuel fear of western pandemic
Full Story
Selected quote with my emphasis added
Quote:Kim said that countries such as Sierra Leone had used financial support from the Bank to improve energy supplies, but added: “This has taught us that we have to be much more serious about putting health systems into place.”
He contrasted health systems in the three west African countries with Rwanda, which has 55,000 health workers. “If this had happened in Rwanda we would have had it under control.”
Kim said it was fortunate Ebola was not a quick-moving virus but the chances of a quick moving virus in the next 10 years is high.
