A girl getting her temperature taken. Yahoo/AFP.
The rate of new cases of Ebola have increased in Guiana, Sierra Leone and Liberia last week. Yahoo/AFP. For the first time in 2015 new cases have increased in all three countries where the disease has been out of control for months. 124 new cases were spread through the three countries. Liberia only saw one more case then they did last week but both Sierra Leone and Liberia had more significant increases. 11 of the cases in Guiana were from one unsafe burial, underscoring the continued difficulty the region has in controlling the virus. Millions of dollars have poured into the country, much of which was spent on trying to educate people about safe burials and the risks of the virus. Of the three countries, Liberia's outbreak is mostly under control, while Guiana has some pockets of transmission. Sierria Leone still has intense transmission in the western part of the country, including the capitol of Freetown. They are also having trouble with contact tracing, a critical step in stopping the virus.
My Comment:
Ebola has certainly fallen off the radar. But this news is still bad. The fact that Guiana, and, critically, Sierra Leone have yet to contain this outbreak is bad news. It is absolutely stunning to me that neither country has been able to get contact tracing right even after all this time. More then 20,000 people have caught this virus, with almost half dying, and as long as there are new transmissions that number will continue to rise. The toll of this disease in terms of lives and the economy is terrible. And the worst part is that if people are careful Ebola has trouble spreading. But nobody in Guiana and Sierra Leone is being careful! The disease never should have gotten as bad as it did and the fact that people are still doing traditional burials is insane.
The good news is that Liberia seems to have the situation under control. With only 5 new cases this week it is very possible that they clamp down on everyone that has the virus to control how many people are exposed. Tracing the contacts of 5 new victims is much easier then the 39 new cases in Guiana and 80 in Sierra Leone. I'm predicting that Liberia will be free of Ebola in a month or two, assuming no cross border contamination. That seemed impossible last year, so this is very good news if it holds up.
Though the virus isn't what it used to be, it is still a major threat. It would only take one person getting on a plane and traveling to another third world country, undetected, to start this outbreak up again. And there still is a tiny chance that the virus could mutate into a kind that spreads more effectively then it does currently. With the relatively low number of new cases compared to last year, the chances of either of those things happening are slim, but as long as Ebola is spreading in Sierra Leone and Guiana it is still a possibility. Those two countries need to get it together and work harder at contact tracing as well as educating people about how dangerous traditional burials are.
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