Predominantly unreported in US news but incredibly important, from YahooNews.com:
Liberia confirms spread of ‘unprecedented’ Ebola epidemic
Conakry (AFP) – Aid organisation Doctors Without Borders said Monday an Ebola outbreak suspected of killing dozens in Guinea was an “unprecedented epidemic” as Liberia confirmed its first cases of the deadly contagion.
Guinea’s health ministry this year has reported 122 “suspicious cases” of viral haemorrhagic fever, including 78 deaths, with 22 of the samples taken from patients testing positive for the highly contagious tropical pathogen.
“We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country: Gueckedou, Macenta, Kissidougou, Nzerekore, and now Conakry,” Mariano Lugli, the organisation’s coordinator in the Guinean capital, said in a statement.
Of significant import is this fact: the virus has crossed into Monrovia, Liberia.
I wrote about the original outbreak here, on Monday the 24th.
“MSF has intervened in almost all reported Ebola outbreaks in recent years, but they were much more geographically contained and involved more remote locations,” Lugli said.
“This geographical spread is worrisome because it will greatly complicate the tasks of the organisations working to control the epidemic.”
“Geographically isolated” is not what Guinea and Liberia are. Let’s look:
Above Guinea is, of course, North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Libya. It is a short step from North Africa and on into Spain and the rest of Europe.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and local health authorities have announced two Ebola cases among seven samples tested from Liberia’s northern Foya district, confirming for the first time the spread of the virus across international borders.
Liberian Health Minister Walter Gwenigale told reporters the patients were sisters, one of whom had died.
The surviving sister returned to Monrovia in a taxi before she could be isolated and the authorities fear she may have spread the virus to her taxi driver and four members of her family.
The woman and those with whom she has come into contact are in quarantine in a hospital 48 kilometres (30 miles) south-east of Monrovia, Gwenigale said.
And that’s how it starts. Please note the above.
One of the two sisters already died (Ebola can have up to a 90% fatality rate), and the one survivor has already stepped into a taxi where transfer could easily have occurred. From there, what of the taxi driver’s family and the individuals who sat in the cab after the sister? And their families?
That is how contagion spreads.
Let one of those infected persons get into a westernized country where transportation is readily available, or a major city with a high population, and transmittal can be geometric.
From there all it would take is one nice plane flight to another continent entirely.
Ebola, incidentally, has no vaccine and there is no treatment.
BZ
