People set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo on Thursday after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, a witness and a senior police officer said, as fear and anger grow over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain.
The arson attack in Rwampara reflects the challenges of health workers trying to curb a rare Ebola virus by using stringent measures that might clash with local customs, such as burial rites. The disease has been spreading for weeks in a region lacking in health facilities and where armed conflict has displaced many people.
The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities because the bodies of those who die from Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare bodies for burial and gather for funerals.
That policy can be extremely unpopular with victims’ families and friends, who aren’t given the chance to bury their loved ones.
I would just pull out and quarantine the area. It may sound heartless, but it’s not worth the lives of others.
How brave of you to suggest the world should once again turns their back on the African people. Ideas like that take true courage and wisdom. You are true a visionary speaking truth “just let 'em die”. They are only Congolese, not like “others” that might have actual intrinsic value.
Very dumb to believe you can just let the virus spread and it won’t reach new regions. And once it spreads to non-African nations, it may find new animal hosts and become endemic in those new continents.
Once it starts killing white people it will turn out the cure is not that expensive after all.
I wish that were true, but whites love to rob each other over healthcare, at least in the United States. And more and more the upper classes seek to dismantle universal healthcare in the UK and Europe.
Don’t be so pessimistic. They developed vaccines for Covid real fucking fast. Of course Americans weren’t that interested in vaccines but in many European countries almost everyone got one for free.
that’s the definition of pandemic.
That’s true, but most people associate that word with a mass disease outbreak (basically a synonym for plague), vs a disease that infects a small number of people in multiple places.
So we change medical terms based on most people making mistakes due to poor education?
The word encompasses both definitions. Language is about knowing word connotation. In English the word currently favors the “plague” connotation. Keep learning, though. Your English is really good.
…which is why I said we should contain it to the smallest possible area.
My dude, they can’t even protect a clinic. How do you suppose your proposed quarantine be enforced?
So instead of an organized system of monitoring, treatment, and quarantine, you’re suggesting the world stick its head in the sand?
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If you do that, you force people to sneak out to save their lives, and it will leak out without anyone knowing until it pops up somewhere else.
There goes the economy, if ebola reaches Trump land.