Adrian Rodriguez
WLH Period 2
Ms. Tompkins
March 12th, 2015
Ebola epidemic ravages West Africa
March 26, 2014 – In Guinea, a traditional tribal healer dies. According to custom, the body is washed, and then publicly buried; 13 women attend the funeral. This is a fairly common event, yet this one is different, because that tribal healer was infected with the Ebola virus. It was at this moment that the most alarming epidemic of the 21st century began.
The Ebola virus is dangerous because of its lethality. It has an alarming rate of 70% lethality rate, and current has not a consistently successful cure, treatment or vaccine. It thankfully does not spread through the air, and ironically due to its high killing speed, it does not spread very fast. However, Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids like blood or sweat such that in poor countries, where sanitation procedures are below standard, the disease can spread very quickly (Global issues in Context, Gale).
Such was the case in Africa. According to the US CDC, the disease first spread across Guinea, where a few hundred cases were reported in the first five months. After that, the disease spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia. It was at this point that all neighboring countries closed their borders, and the three countries affected were placed under a “cordon-sanitaire”, and the most affected areas were quarantined. Global organizations like WHO began working with local government towards increased awareness and prevention, but the disease continued to spread. In less than six months, 4,500 cases across all three countries were tallied, and in almost a year, a total 18,500. Currently, with the epidemic still very much ongoing, there have been 24,000 suspected, probable or confirmed, 14,400 laboratory confirmed cases, and out of those about 9,900 died, around the expected 70%. (US CDC).
However, the situation does not look as bleak as it seems, as most ironically and perhaps morally shaky, due to the lethality of the disease it is much easier to find human subjects willing to test out experimental treatment. At the present, according to BBC, there are three promising possibilities, two which are vaccines, and the third one is meant to treat the disease once a person has already been infected. The first one is a vaccine, which works just like regular vaccines: it uses a carrier virus, in this case a modified livestock virus, to carry a single Ebola gene, hoping to trigger an immune response that will make the body produce antibodies specialized to combat Ebola before one is actually infected by the real disease. The second is also a vaccine, so it is pretty similar to the first option: it uses a chimpanzee cold virus to carry an Ebola protein, hoping to have the same effect. The third one is meant not to make the body create antibodies for Ebola, but instead it uses already existing ones, acquired from an Ebola survivor’s blood, to prepare a serum. (BBC) There is however, a movement against systematic research of these drugs using Ebola patients, due to the need of a control test. This means that some people will not have a chance to get the treatment they might need in order to survive; they would essentially be given less chances to live. This dilemma is made even worse due to extreme lethality of the disease.
With the West African epidemic far from over, and recent infections in Spain and the US, the international community is faced with a choice of great consequences. Either cross an ethical line, and use current Ebola infected like experimental subjects in order to develop a cure for future infected both in Africa and in Western countries, or to not cross it, using all possible means to save lives now, yet risk the epidemic getting out of hand and possibly becoming a global catastrophe.
Works Cited
Ebola, GaleGroup. Global Issues in Context Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Global Issues In Context. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.
CDC. "2014 West Africa Outbreak." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US CDC, 2014 - 2015. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.
BBC News. "Ebola: The Race for Drugs and Vaccines." BBC News. BBC, 24 Feb. 2015. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.
1. My favorite aspect of the article was your conclusion. I think you did a really good job of summarizing the choices that the international community faces while remaining objective in terms what must be done.
ReplyDelete2. I think that this connects to the current measles outbreak in the US right now. While it is nowhere close to the level of decimation that was the result of the Ebola outbreak, the ethical debates regarding vaccines that stem from the outbreak resemble those of the Ebola outbreak in several ways.
3. One question I have now is were these experimental cures used to cure the few people in the US who contracted Ebola or were other methods used?
Even though the dangers of Ebola had are really well known, I think you did a really good job further explaining the issue and using good evidence that made me understand the problem, and how severe it is. This connects to us in the US because we are all exposed to many things everyday, so it is possible that we catch a disease like Ebola. One question that I still have is how has the problem improved or gotten worse in the year?
ReplyDelete