Ebola : International problem needs global response

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Ruth Hirsch is an intern with OBV from the University of New York. She is here helping with the 2015 General Election campaign and undertaking political research. We always encourage our interns and all staff to write and Ruth has started with a very relevant piece about the Ebola crisis.

The Ebola virus hit a little closer to home on Tuesday, when the CDC confirmed the first U.S. case. The victim, who had recently visited Liberia, was admitted to a Dallas, TX hospital on Sunday and placed in isolation. Although he is not the first to be treated in the United States, he is the first to have developed symptoms there, raising regional concerns. Other people are being screened for exposure, including five students in Dallas-area public schools.

Perhaps this case will help to create a sense of urgency in the West regarding the spread of this disease. By all accounts, urgency is warranted; the WHO declared the current outbreak an “international emergency” back in August. The virus is spreading quite quickly, with new reports saying five people are infected with the virus every hour in Sierra Leone. More than 7,100 people in total have contracted the disease. Senior U.N. officials are saying it is the worst epidemic they have ever seen.

With numbers like these, it seems baffling how slow the international response has been. There may be some truth to the claim made in a recent Guardian headline, that “the focus on [the] first U.S. Ebola case shows how cheaply we value African lives.” As thousands die in Africa, victims remain nameless, faceless, and forgotten; however, the two patients treated at a U.S. hospital earlier this summer have become celebrities, and the recent Dallas case has garnered immediate, individual attention. It seems likely that now that it has arrived within its borders, the U.S. will now start to see the virus as a more pressing problem.

Perhaps the treatments that have been tested there recently will be made available to doctors working in Africa, although this solution creates problems as well; the treatments are still experimental, and have not been tested on a large scale. Some say that this would constitute medical experimentation on impoverished Africans, which no one wants to be accused of. However, others point out that the treatment has been made available to westerners but not Africans.

However, a more immediate and panicked U.S. response could be a good thing, as long as it extends beyond their borders. Medicines Sans Frontieres has called the Western response to the virus “woefully inadequate” so far; perhaps this will be the wake-up call they need to start treating the epidemic like the crisis it is, and devoting appropriate resources to stopping it.

Ruth Hirsch

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