Aid cuts didn’t cause ebola |
Ebola is a very scary disease, the sort of nightmarish plague seen in a Hollywood disaster movie with gruesome symptoms and terrifying death rates. It starts with a fever and headache, confusingly similar to malaria or typhoid, but all too often ends with bleeding gums, diarrhoea and vomiting before a disoriented patient suffers chronic organ failure. Now it has erupted again in the heart of Africa. Medics on the Congolese frontline fear their efforts to contain this lethal haemorrhagic virus are floundering, with official warnings that it could spread to nine more countries.
The treatment of Henry Nowak’s killer was all about race
Vickrum Digwa is no Sikh
Lois McLatchie Miller
Bonnie Blue and the truth about the pro-life movement
There are grim echoes of the 2014 outbreak, when almost 30,000 people in three West African nations were infected. Early warning signs have again been missed, including the death more than one month ago of a nurse in Mongbwalu, a remote gold mining town thought to be the epicentre that saw a spate of similar fatalities among health workers and within families. Cases are surging with frightening speed and cropping up in multiple sites, including over the border in Uganda. There are at least 1,000 suspected cases – with 400 in Mongbwalu alone – and 246 confirmed deaths. The World Health Organisation has declared a public health emergency of international concern. ‘The virus knows no borders, it knows no race, it knows no tribe,’ said Roger Kamba, Democratic Republic of Congo’s health minister. ‘The virus affects us all.’
This is the seventeenth outbreak in his country since discovery half a century ago of this disease, which spreads from infected animals such as fruit bats. But it has already become the third worst Ebola incidence on record, just a fortnight after its official declaration. Congo’s previous worst Ebola explosion was eight years ago; it took two years to quell and caused 2,229 deaths. But this strain is the much rarer........