A health care worker treating Ebola victims. Yahoo/AFP.
The West African country of Mali has announced that they have their first confirmed case of Ebola. Yahoo/AFP. The victim is a 2 year old girl who had recently been to Guiana, where the virus is out of control. The girl and everyone who had contact with her have been put into isolation. Mali borders the country of Guiana and has had several Ebola scares before. Mali is urging calm and claims that everything that can be done to prevent the spread of the virus will be done. It also urged people to stop unnecessary travel and to observe hygiene.
My Comment:
This is obviously bad news but time will tell if this will come under control. The fact that there is only one victim and the fact that it sounds like they got her into isolation right away means that Mali has a good chance at controlling this outbreak, much like Senegal did. Unfortunately, the extremely young age of the victim doesn't bode well for the victims survival but at the very least this outbreak should be easier to contain then the ones in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guiana. That being said, with the way things are in those countries it would not be surprising if there is a huge spike in exported cases. People will start to flee those countries and some of them will be carrying the virus. It is very possible, and indeed likely that one or more of these people will end up in Mali.
I'm also concerned about the fact that Mali is less stable then any of the other countries effected by Ebola, except maybe Nigeria. They have a very large Islamic insurgency that continues to rage. French forces are there fighting the insurgents. The good news is that this case is almost certainly in the south of the country while the insurgency is in the north. Still, you have to wonder how effective a government will be at fighting Ebola when they also have to fight insurgents. Nigeria was able to do it after their small outbreak and is now Ebola free, so there is hope at least.
No comments:
Post a Comment