It has taken the arrival in the US of an Ebola-infected patient to reignite Western fears about a problem that, competing for attention alongside the rise of Isis, has perhaps not received the media coverage it might warrant.
To describe the wider threat to the West as minuscule would be an overstatement. The facilities needed to isolate patients, and the availability of experimental drugs, mean that cases can be treated to the highest possible standards. But quite the reverse holds true in countries such as Sierra Leone, where two million people have been placed in quarantine, and there is less than one doctor for every 10 000 people – compared with 123 in the US. Boosting frontline medical facilities and logistical efforts has been recognised as crucial.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that $1 billion (R11 billion) is needed if the outbreak is to be controlled, but money is not enough on its own. That point has been made abundantly clear by AU chairwoman Nkosana Dlamini Zuma this week. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has been at the forefront of the international response, has heavily criticised the lack of muscle from developed nations, last week going so far as to reject money from Australia but ask for medical teams instead.
US President Barack Obama has sent 3 000 troops to west Africa, but other wealthy nations must heed the call from MSF to ramp up this number – only the second time the organisation has asked for such help. A collapse of order in severely affected west African countries, only just recovering from brutal civil wars, would put years of progress at risk.
Every day counts in the international response to the deadliest outbreak of Ebola in human history. The official number of people infected yesterday afternoon stood at 7 470 – of which 3 431 have died. But the US Health Institute has suggested that the true scale of the outbreak may have been hugely underestimated due to under-reporting.
Reported cases are still doubling at a rate of roughly every three weeks, and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has presented a worst-case scenario of 1.4 million infections by January 20 in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone.
Africa is facing one of her darkest hours.