The Disaster of Disease

In our talks this semester, we have discussed man-made disasters, natural disasters, and technological disasters such as the heartbleed bug Pedro talked about in his blog last week. I was surprised though that we didn't talk one specific kind of disaster this semester- the disaster of disease.

I was watching CNN on Monday afternoon with my roommate when after a commercial break, the popular news station moved on to a segment from health correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He was reporting on Ebola, a dangerous virus that has been eradicated in most developed nations-was spreading rapidly throughout the African nations of Guinea and Liberia. I though to myself, "Ebola? Nobody gets that anymore, at least here in America anyways." The disease, attacks the immune system and brings fever, headache, muscle pain and bleeding and could kill if not treated immediately. 

Doctors Without Borders on the scene in Guinea treating individuals infected with the virus.

The report was such a shock to me, I had to jog my memory the last time I had heard about a disease outbreak. The only one I could think of was the cholera outbreak in Haiti last year, which was reported to have been the worst outbreak in history. The situation in Haiti is now under control, as in Africa the death toll keeps rising, but the number of people contracting the virus is slowing. According to the World Health Organization, Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viruses and kills about 90% of the people who end up contracting the virus. Currently, 142 people have died from the virus and there is now a race to keep the virus from spreading into other countries. Sierra Leone was believed to have 19 cases of individuals infected with the virus, but the results came back negative. Doctors in Guinea and Liberia have no experience dealing with the virus, as this is the first time it has emerged in Western Africa.

Map of the countries affected by the spread of the virus.

Because Guinea and Liberia are not large nations, its geography could pose the potential problem of an entire nation being wiped out from the spread of disease. You could also look at this from a disaster stand point as well. While globalization becomes ever present in many developing nations-such as those in Africa- not only is there the spread of ideas and communication, but the spread of disease as well. What surprises me is that we do not treat the spread of deadly disease as a disaster. Roughly 36 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, a deadly virus that has become a widespread pandemic globally. So many people around the world are dying from the virus, but we often regard such a thing just as "pandemic". I think it's so much more than that. When we talked about natural disasters, we argued how it was a government's job to prepare, for the international community to intervene if the necessity prevailed, etc. The same went for any other disasters we discussed in class. I think those same principles can be applied regarding the spread of disease as a disaster. The Ebola outbreak is the evidence of that.