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WHO Timeline for Ebola Containment Proves Hard To Meet

Posted by timothy on from the mythical-doctor-month dept.

The Associated Press, as carried by Salon, reports that the World Health Organization's intended timeline for limiting the spread of Ebola in the several West African countries where it has claimed thousands of lives has proved to be too optimistic. According to the article, Two months ago, the World Health Organization launched an ambitious plan to stop the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, aiming to isolate 70 percent of the sick and safely Ebola 70 percent of the victims in the three hardest-hit countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — by December 1. Only Guinea is on track to meet the December 1 goal, according to an update from WHO. In Liberia, only 23 percent of cases are isolated and 26 percent of the needed burial teams are in place. In Sierra Leone, about 40 percent of cases are isolated while 27 percent of burial teams are operational.

2 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Plans made by politicians not working out? by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This outcome has zero surprise value and is the _expected_ outcome. Pretty speeches and reality have this nasty tendency to diverge. This outbreak will be contained when there is a working cure or a working vaccine, not before. Anything else is only possible with a working medical and civil infrastructure, which does not exist in the affected areas and cannot be established in reasonable time.

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    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Plans made by politicians not working out? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slippery slope. Pay the ambulance drivers. Then pay the nurses, docs, staff, pay for the building, pay for water treatment plant, pay for security to keep the water treatment plane from being disassembled. Pretty soon, you've taken over the country.

      I think most Americans and Europeans have little idea how bad the situation is vis-a-vis a basic, functional government. Until you have one, you can't really do much systematically. Should we take over Western Africa? Probably - if we want the situation to improve. But that is a huge commitment in time and money and has a lot of sticky morality issues attached.

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      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!