I hope a vaccine is soon available to all who need it.
3
"Are you here to help us, or to prevent this thing from coming to you?"
Mostly, to prevent the spread to "us" whoever one chooses "us" to be. Politically this is not a realistic response, however, objectively it is nonsensical to reject no strings assistance regardless of the degree of altruism for said assistance. The root problem is resource constraints, there simply is not enough resource to fix every problem worldwide.
6
A rational apolitical response would be: declare the emergency and bring more resources to bear. Use the Merck vaccine as it has been accepted locally. AND quarantine the area to any other international travel, either direction, to the maximum extent possible. Quarantine any and all health workers for one month in country before they allowed to return to their home countries. Prosecute and jail, for long terms, anyone who attempts to sneak back in. Tough love. Sorry if self-proclaimed progressives and one worlders can’t handle rational solutions. If they are so enamored of open fluid borders, they should go themselves as aid workers, and be subject to the suggested quarantine. Any takers? No? I didn’t think so.
8
@Paul Your attempt to inject political vitriol into this conversation is sad. What do you hope to accomplish by it?
8
The ebola situation in North Kivu is the public health equivalent of a perfect storm. Post-colonial ethnic, political and economic chaos, inadequately addressed by international institutions, have resulted in a breakdown in infrastructure and social cohesion. Young men and boys have been recruited by militias. A chronic state of what we would consider gang warfare has terrorized and paralyzed much of the region, fueled not by narcotics, but the uncontrolled mining and illegal shipment of coltan. Powerful economic interests, corporate and governmental, have normalized this coltan trade for profit and convenience. Militias/gangs see the state and international efforts to deal with the public health crisis as a threat to their power and revenue. A breakdown of much of the public education and health systems has made it difficult to educate the public about not only ebola, but basic issues of public health and hygiene. Ignorance and superstition are rampant. (continued)
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Goma isn't a half mile from Rwanda; it's right on the border. The border bisects the an urban area that's Goma on the Congo side, Gisenyi on the Rwanda side. There's nothing between these cities besides border agents and a line on a map. This must be terrifying news for millions of Rwandans.
10
“We should not appear to be seen as if we are parachuting in and out because of Ebola,” he said.
Africa's problems are so systemic that the spread of ebola and the ability to respond to it are only symptoms. Poverty, corruption, environmental disaster, and over-population are of a magnitude that only a huge global response sustained over decades can address. But the infrastructure has to be in place to make that effort effective. Global warming is easy to fix compared with this. All that's needed is to figure out how to make it highly profitable to someone.
9
The people of DRC are not only distrustful, uneducated and recalcitrant but some also like to murder the foreign aid workers, and the disease spreads to neighboring countries, all foreign aid should be suspended and no flights or ships from the middle region of Africa should be allowed to land outside of Africa.
9
@globalnomad
Yeah, suspend aid. That'll make them trustful, educated, and compliant.
And no flights or ships? In case you didn't notice some Americans refuse to get vaccinated for measles (and some commit murder too), so I guess by your logic we should suspend flights out of the US?
You can't reasonably stop trade with the whole continent. Let's leave out the point that such a policy would be a de-facto act of war; I suspect it would be easier (and more effective) to fight the epidemic than to try to prevent 1.2 billion Africans from leaving a continent with a coastline 19 million miles long.
8
I agree with Mark's assessment of @globalnomad's shortsighted, unworkable, and morally deficient proposal for responding to the ebola outbreak. Let's hope that our president doesn't also think along these lines.
Someone using the moniker @globalnomad (or serving as commander in chief) should realize
that on our increasingly interconnected and interdependent planet, anyone is potentially everyone else’s problem (or benefactor).
that within any of the world’s cultures, there is a similar range of personalities and proclivities. Spend enough time in a place to see beneath the veneer of culture and superficial appearance, and one learns that we’re pretty much the same. At a non-superficial level, differences within groups greatly outweigh differences between groups.
that the forces of global integration, fuelled by revolutions in technology and communication, are inexorable.
that by caring about one another, and acting wisely, we all have much to share, and much to learn.
that by turning inward, and acting impulsively and foolishly, we have much to lose.
-that those whose ancestors adapted to northern climes by losing skin pigmentation - ‘white’ people - constitute about 16 % of the human race.
The optics of white people in the United States rallying around an obviously racist, amoral and uninformed president do not sit well with the rest of the world. We are poisoning our own well.
7
This is a huge wakeup call to the world. No one on the planet is ready for a pandemic of ebola. No health care system in the world is ready for the demand if Goma explodes.
Remember Dallas. Remember the panic, everytime there was another case, and that individual's flight "to a hospital designated to handle ebola cases". On a mass scale that protocol would be a joke.
Let us hope the emergency is declared, so our acting president will know what to do.
14
@A Bond As a nurse there are some truly horrible ways to die. These hemorraghic fevers are terrible. They liquify you from the inside out and take every single opportunity offered to infect anyone who comes even close to you. They can infect long after you are dead. If you thought a cold or ther flu was easily spread, this can spread like wildfire. And if left unchecked, makes all those zombie movies look like a walk in the park. Ebloa and Marburg are truly frightening.
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@PerAxel
I appreciate the job you do. You are in the line of fire. My mother is friends with a nurse, and she flat out said there are not enough gloves, iv's, or supplies if this were to ever happen. Its realistic to know you can count on some people "not showing up for work," in your profession, when you start imagining this "zombie apocalypse" scenario. It is frightening.
5
Sound the alarms. I sure hope something is being done to protect the airport and everything is being done to contain this virus. Sadly, we can’t count on our president to do a thing because he can’t see past the reflection of his nose in the mirror.
14
(continued) One can only hope that ebola in Goma is not the tip of the sword of a pandemic. And that the response of the USA, the nation with the greatest resources and influence to deal with this crisis, is rational and responsible. I worry if our leader has the strength to put aside his current foray into racist distraction, and recognize the great responsibility inherent in his office; to the good people of his own nation, to the wonderful, talented and aspiring people of the Central African Highlands - the birthplace of the human race, and to the people of the world.
12
Important stories like this one get overlooked with American politicians calling each other names.
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Our prior president understood that enlightened self-interest in helping Africa stop the last major Ebola outbreak is in our national interest. Thank goodness efforts to develop a vaccine since 2015 have been successful in slowing the spread. The spread of the disease seems driven mostly by fear and mistrust of outsiders fomented by purveyors of hate.
Our current president has demonstrated to a great degree self-interest … enlightened thinking not so much. The ultimate challenge it would seem would be for the current president to publicly support international cooperation to stop a deadly outbreak … even if it is in our national self-interest.
5
Declare the emergency please
8
@Jen Sulkow
WHO was severely criticized for (rightly) declaring the 2009 influenza a pandemic. It is more wary and looks at the epidemiological facts more closely. Declaring an emergency while the epidemic seems containable from a medical standpoint also has far-reaching political and economic consequences.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01893-1
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)30243-0/fulltext
Even if the emergency is not (yet?) declared you can give funds today to medical NGOs present on the ground.
2
"The year-old Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached the city of Goma, which has a population of nearly 2 million, an international airport and ferries and buses that fan out over much of the region. "
This sentence alone should have been reason enough to declare it a national threat and to encourage funding and help from outside forces. Reaching an area with such access to it, and therefore access to other areas, means that this can very easily turn from an epidemic - a diseases restricted to a certain, local area- to a pandemic - a disease that spreads EVERYWHERE.
Later in the article Dr. Tedros was questioned by people in the street of the Congo if he were helping them because he actually wanted to help THEM, or if he were trying to prevent the disease from spreading to him or where he came from. To this I say, does it really matter WHY the help is being given? So long is there is more funding going to hospitals and clinics so that they are better equipped to save more people? I bet the the "1,665" who have contracted Ebola and died because of it wouldn't have cared about the answer to that question.
Illnesses like Ebola don't care about your country of origin. It will kill if it can, and usually does. There should be more funding for the treatment of this disease, especially in areas such as the Congo.
12
Possibly the biggest story of the decade, but all anyone's talking about is the president's latest stupid tweets.
34
@Bridgman That's because every tweet is a Constitutional crisis.
4
"He passed through three health checkpoints on the bus ride without any symptoms being detected, and gave a different name at each checkpoint, apparently hoping to avoid being detained, according to local health authorities."
How is this not a criminal act? At least he didn't try to board a plane!
26
@LegalEagle You are asking the wrong question. This is not about what you seem to be worried about. This man will almost surely die. We will not know who he is leaving behind, in all likelihood.
But more, even, then that is there is already more than enough blame to go around many times on this planet. Try a little tenderness when searching for the true questions.
3
@ohdearwhatnow I respectfully disagree with your admonition of @LegalEagle. This 'pastor' knew only too well the horrors of this disease as he mingled with patients. To put the world population at danger - which is what he did - just so he could pursue his personal travel desires is not godly nor humanitarian. Blame is needed as bad, selfish decisions need to be learned from and made an example of. "Tenderness" toward selfish decisions made without regard to other peoples' lives is not warranted here.
16
@ohdearwhatnow No, what he did was criminally negligent.
He may very well die, but to carry the virus to a major populated area is both selfish and dangerous.
At what point do you stop worrying about the feelings of an individual when they place so many other lives in danger.
Shame on him.
17
WHO was slow to respond on the last epidemic a few yrs ago..why the repeat hesitation?
"The last refusal to declare an international emergency occurred even after the disease had reached Uganda, where there were three cases in people who had crossed the border from Congo."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/record-number-of-african-migrants-coming-to-mexican-border
4
@Sarah
I am not aware that the cases from DRC triggered an outbreak in Uganda.
https://health.go.ug/press-release
Ebola can be contained through simple measures because it is spread direct contact, not through respiratory transmission. The problem seems to be the population's response in DRC, not the means to control the disease.
Before we criticize the Congolese for their reaction despite all scientific evidence, let's solve our measles vaccination problem in the West.
3
Having been to Goma, it has little resemblance to any city of 2 million souls, anywhere in the world. As a geologist I went almost everywhere. Goma medicine is ill equipped to handle a broken finger, Ebola care is an oxymoron. Even if they have an effective vaccine, getting it to a recalcitrant, distrustful, and uneducated population is hopeless. We're about to see some real epidemic numbers now.
31
@Lawrence Siegel
Stupidity and ignorance will doom the human population. But in fifty-years when the wall debate will be centered on the Canadian border— once worldwide temperatures are 8-12 degrees hotter— it will be the silver-lining for what doesn’t go extinct in the natural-world.
Just wait until we use up all the old antibiotic effectiveness— to help factory-farms fatten the cows, pigs, chickens and sheep forced into bacterially-infested, over-crowded conditions— and the result is widespread deadly MRSA’s, dying from an infected scratch or from rapidly-spreading and under-treated/under-diagnosed diseases like Lyme Disease (which will spread as the temperatures rise).
22
How about that pastor who seemed to do everything possible to carry the disease to a new area! An illogical religious belief that the disease couldn't touch a 'vessel of God' combined with extreme selfishness once he realized that he had, in fact, fallen ill. The people he might have sickened--and even killed--after he was treated at home were apparently unimportant compared to his need to travel to Goma.
40
I don't quite understand this part:
"Dr. Tedros said people in the street in Congo have asked him, “‘Are you here to help us, or to prevent this thing from coming to you? Are you doing this for us, or for yourself?’ It embarrasses me.”"
There is no reason to be embarrassed. Every human being who is even remotely aware of what an epidemic is like, and what an Ebola epidemic might be like, should be able to understand the correct answer: both, with a strong emphasis on stopping the progression of the epidemic. I don't see how a worldwide epidemic would help Africa, or how it would be a cause to rejoice.
19
Trump and his administration are incapable of handling an emergency of any kind let alone an Ebola epidemic. Action should be taken now to stop the out break and help those effected.
15
The USA can continue to ignore this crisis, but it does so to it's detriment. And I guarantee trumps answer to this when it reaches our shores will only serve to make things worse.
17
@KaneSugar
Note that the WHO headquarters are located in Switzerland. Its current director is Ethiopian.
21