Slow global response to Ebola costing lives
KEITH MARTIN The Ebola virus outbreak tearing through West Africa is a perfect storm: a lethal disease, superimposed upon extremely weak governments, fractured to nonexistent health systems and a desperately frightened populace. This highly dangerous contagion is flourishing in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, among the world’s poorest countries, and the devastation is rapidly getting much worse. The international community can waste no more time.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, just returned from the epicentre of the outbreak and was visibly shaken by what he saw. He said the “window of opportunity” to control the outbreak is closing fast. This is no overstatement. This strain of Ebola virus kills 55 per cent of those who contract it. To date, 3,707 people have been infected; 1,848 have died.
The World Health Organization and others in the field believe these numbers significantly underestimate the true impact of the outbreak. To compound the devastation, more than 100 health-care workers (5 per cent of Liberia’s meagre health workforce) have also been lost to the virus. What has become particularly frightening is that the infection rate is now increasing exponentially and has spread, for the first time since Ebola was discovered in 1976, into urban centres. Densely populated and without even rudimentary public health and primary care services, this is a perfect environment for a highly lethal virus to spread widely and kill thousands.
The international community’s response to this global health emergency has been deplorably slow. It took more than six months after the outbreak was identified before the WHO, itself devastated by budget cuts, released its Ebola virus Disease Outbreak Response Plan. Despite a plan, the funds and people to implement it are in short supply. The WHO has asked for $600 million, yet only a third of this has been committed. No one knows how long it will take to implement this plan but it will not be in the short term. Yet time is not our friend and definitive action is urgently needed.
The grim reality on the ground is that patient care and efforts to prevent the spread of the outbreak rests on the shoulders of the few. A dwindling population of brave, local health-care providers and the extraordinary Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) are providing these life-saving services. International calls to find health workers and urgently needed medical supplies, such as personal protective equipment and diagnostics, have met with tepid results. This is an appalling response to an international medical emergency.
Ebola’s infection rate is now increasing exponentially. The virus’ spread against the backdrop of a feeble response by the international community must compel us to think of another way to get essential medical supplies and personnel to where they are needed now. This will enable the people in the affected region to access the medical care and public health initiatives needed to save lives and prevent the spread of the virus. At this critical moment in time there is one effective way to do this.
The leaders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone should be approached by a coalition of nations to see if they would accept a civil-military emergency humanitarian response mission to their countries. Defence departments in Canada, the U.S., Britain, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Norway and others have effective, rapid response mechanisms to humanitarian emergencies. They are deployed in natural disasters and this outbreak can surely be considered as such.
These nations possess the lift, equipment, logistics, medical personnel and expertise to organize and execute a rapid humanitarian response operation. Working closely with the affected West African nations’ domestic health and military capabilities, such a rapid mobilization and deployment of humanitarian assets will save lives and is the best chance we have to rapidly arrest the spread of the virus.
Time is not on our side. The international community’s languid response to this crisis is costing lives. Definitive, rapid, effective action is needed now. The people of West Africa and the brave health-care workers trying to contain this deadly killer need our help. It’s time to act.