As Ebola touches base in America

According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Duncan – an American citizen who recently visited Liberia, returned to the United States with the deadly sickness and is presently under treatment, while his family members are in isolation… Meanwhile, efforts are underway to track and contain all contacts he would have made before, during […]

According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Duncan – an American citizen who recently visited Liberia, returned to the United States with the deadly sickness and is presently under treatment, while his family members are in isolation… Meanwhile, efforts are underway to track and contain all contacts he would have made before, during and after his trip.
Incidentally he is not the first to enter the U.S. with Ebola as two earlier patients …had done so and were successfully treated. They were aid workers who contacted the disease while offering humanitarian services to the needy in Liberia. The whole world had waited in anxiety and prayers for the successful treatment while they were ferried into the US in special ambulances and aircraft, as at then no known cure for the disease was available, except for the experimental drug ZMapp, of which only clinical samples could be accessed. Hence their eventual recovery was a big relief.
But this Texan’s case is different and qualifies for the attention it is getting due to the unique circumstances surrounding it. The patient’s case represents one of the most feared scenarios in the ongoing campaign against Ebola; being the likelihood of its spread through passengers on international travel. Although the man travelled from an Ebola hotspot – Liberia to the U.S., he could easily have travelled to the United Kingdom or Russia or even warring Ukraine. In the alternative he could also have toured choice Asian locations like India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, to name a few, and spread his deadly weapon of mass destruction on innocent victims in these areas. That is if such is not the yet to be detected situation.  
However beyond whatever fears it may trigger in sundry circles, the advent of Ebola into the U.S. is serving one purpose at least. It avails the world an opportunity for a dress rehearsal of sorts for demonstrating response options and strategies for the worst case scenario, in the face of likely escalation in the spread of the disease to better endowed parts of the world. The world has experienced the play-out of Ebola in African states with compromised health service delivery. Duncan has launched a new phase of the Ebola containment campaign, this time in a land of technological marvels. If the world ever needed a laboratory for testing the various faces of the Ebola crisis, it has Duncan to thank for unwittingly offering up the U.S. as testing ground.
Now the world’s capacity for handling critical challenges such as Ebola will be tested and lessons learned. Even the neglect of pharmaceutical enterprise in developing medication for ‘unpopular’ diseases of which Ebola was one until recently has changed.  
It is in this context that the present global high alert on Ebola is justified and even requires escalation. As if foreseeing its eventual status as a choice destination for the disease the US government recently launched a massive bailout programme for Liberia featuring the deployment of huge funds and military personnel to that country. While some had considered the initiative as a case of the US weeping more that the bereaved African states of Guinea, Liberia and Senegal, its merit is now established as the super power has now joined the league of the bereaved.
Nevertheless while Ebola may actually travel around with its characteristic odiousness and virulence, the response to it in country after country, will be different depending on the state of medical facilities in each nation. That is why even as its arrival in the U.S. has not generated some panic it is the situation is different from that the African nations that are contending with its hellish ravages.  
Even at that the U.S. officials are not taking things lightly. So far the response to this one case has been as if there is an Ebola epidemic already in that country. Such is the proactive stance that the disease requires to be checkmated.
And this is the main lesson for the African Ebola hotspot nations. It is a hackneyed argument that improvement in healthcare has never enjoyed the priority status as expected. Hence Ebola is ravaging their citizens as a grim reaper. If the landing of Ebola in America and other likely developed societies has any lesson, it is the need for a rethink and rework of the health care system.
A typical case is the Nigerian situation. Whereas the initial salvo against the early cases of Ebola has recorded successes, the follow up phase clearly needs a re-positioning. So far, beyond the distribution of sanitizers and infra red remote thermometers to favoured schools and establishments, the real deal of revamping the health sector is still in abeyance.
Too bad.

Daminabo is a member of the Editorial Board of Daily Trust