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Guinea Faces Ebola Epidemic On Unprecedented Scale, Doctors Warn
Médecins sans Frontières says lethal virus has broken out in areas hundreds of miles apart, while death toll passes 80
The Guardian
Guinea faces an Ebola epidemic on an unprecedented scale as it battles to contain confirmed cases now scattered across several locations that are far apart, the medical charity Médecins sans Frontières said.
The warning from an organisation used to tackling Ebola in central Africa came after Guinea’s president appealed for calm as the number of deaths linked to an outbreak on the border with Liberia and Sierra Leone passed 80.
The outbreak of one of the world’s most lethal infectious diseases has alarmed a number of governments with weak health systems, prompting Senegal to close its border with Guinea and other neighbours to restrict travel and cross-border exchanges.
Figures released overnight by Guinea’s health ministry showed that there had been 78 deaths from 122 cases of suspected Ebola since January, up from 70. Of these, there were 22 laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola, the ministry said.
“We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country,” said Mariano Lugli, the co-ordinator of Médecins sans Frontières’ project in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.
The organisation said on Monday it had been involved in dealing with nearly all other recent Ebola outbreaks, mostly in remote parts of central African nations, but Guinea is fighting to contain the disease in numerous locations, some of which are hundreds of miles apart.
“This geographical spread is worrisome because it will greatly complicate the tasks of the organisations working to control the epidemic,” Lugli added.
Ebola is a fairly rare disease. The numbers attributed to it are not yet epidemic. Small pox may not be more virulent, but during the twentieth century it kill almost five million a year worldwide.
Because of how Ebola kills its victims, every one jumps on the bandwagon and gets hysterical because it is so horrific, and because they don’t have a cure or antidote, (vaccine) for it yet.
We must always be vigilant about our vulnerabilities, but we must also take into consideration what we so blatantly ignore, which is that we become hysterical because of some small trifle we cannot control and yet ignore the overwhelming number of deaths from other deaths that we can control.
Perspective is what is needed now, not this hysterical screaming !!!