On Oct. 20, the World Health Organization declared Nigeria “free of Ebola transmission,” meaning that 42 days had elapsed since the last new case developed. Nigeria’s Ebola outbreak began in July, when an infected Liberian diplomat arrived in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The outbreak included 19 cases, of which seven proved fatal (other sources give the numbers as 20 cases and eight deaths). The international news media, accustomed to portraying Nigeria negatively, has rushed to publish story after story lauding Nigeria’s efforts against Ebola and explaining how Nigeria stopped the outbreak. Nigeria’s plaudits on Ebola are deserved, but the halt [...]
Across Africa and the Middle East, governments and international organizations are paying the price for responding to crises too late. Last week, the continuing spread of Ebola in West Africa vied for global attention with new advances and atrocities in Syria and Iraq by the so-called Islamic State (IS). These were arguably both avoidable disasters. A more determined international medical effort to contain Ebola when it appeared in Liberia and Sierra Leone at the start of this year would almost certainly have stemmed the epidemic. Earlier Western and Arab military action against IS, perhaps paired with a nasty but necessary [...]
Delta Airlines Flight 217 leaves Leopold Senghor International Airport in Dakar each Wednesday at 11:15 AM, bound for New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. During the 8-hour, 25-minute flight, the plane’s passengers can enjoy a variety of movies, have a meal and take advantage of the plane’s WiFi connection in relative comfort. And any one of them could be carrying the Ebola virus to New York, extending the epidemic’s reach to North America. The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has prompted a wider discussion about the ability of the United States and other industrialized democracies to respond to [...]
