Poverty Helps Fuel Ebola Outbreak, Experts Say
Steve Baragona
August 01, 2014 5:59 PM
Ebola spreads through contact with the blood and fluids of infected people. But experts say the outbreak is also being fueled by poverty and poor governance.
In West Africa, they are literally building the facilities to handle Ebola from scratch. Improvised tents house quarantined Ebola patients.
Many hospitals in the region lack basic equipment, says Tulane University virus expert Dr. Daniel Bausch. He spoke to VOA by Skype.
?You go to a hospital in Sierra Leone or Liberia, and it?s not unusual for a healthcare worker to say, ?We don?t have gloves.? Or, ?We don?t have clean needles,'"said Bausch.
Poor health systems plague the continent?s other Ebola hotspots, too. Bausch says there's a common factor.
?All of the large outbreaks of Ebola or its sister virus, Marburg, happen in places where social and political unrest over the years have decimated the public health system," he said.
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It doesn?t have to be this way, says Dr. William Karesh with the EcoHealth Alliance, also speaking via Skype.
?You have outbreaks in Uganda and they have invested in their health systems and they have invested in their education systems. So, of course, they still have these outbreaks but they?re controlled very rapidly," said Karesh.
Once this outbreak ends, Karesh says, health officials need to start preparing for the next one with better labs and hospitals, and more public information on how to prevent infection.
?We can?t stop earthquakes, but we can prevent a lot of the damage of earthquakes. And it?s the same with these emerging diseases and Ebola," he said.
If governments invest in better education and healthcare systems, he says, the next outbreak could be less deadly.
