Ebola Crisis in West Africa

If you have been following my blog throughout the last year, you would know that I have a previous post on the Ebola Crisis in West Africa from April. It was actually my first blog post, because it was a opinion column I wrote for my high school newspaper. Basically that post was about the lack of attention on medical emergencies in foreign countries. 

Medical experts haven't found a safe cure for the virus yet, but there have been promising signs in containing it. When I wrote my last article about Ebola, I had never even heard of the virus. I just remember looking at headlines on USA Today and thinking 'I should bring attention to this issue because it sounds pretty serious', and serious it is. When I wrote the article I had researched about the number of deaths caused by the virus (because there had about a 90% mortality death rate) and found that there were about 90 deaths in Liberia, which was the main location of where the virus was. According to the World Health Organization, there have been 113 deaths since Thursday. That's four days ago from today. 

Health workers in Liberia are currently working on an experimental drug. But, naturally, there are consequences of experimental drugs. This drug is called ZMapp and medical experts are saying that it's unclear as to whether this drug is absolutely effective or not, because it has never been tested on humans. There have been reports in West Africa with resistance from using the drug, which has caused conflict among family members and people in the community. People are trying to take their sick relatives away from health centers where they are being treated, and mobs have started rioting in the streets. 

A new problem of this virus is also emerging; the issue of quarantine. All of the countries that are exposed to the Ebola virus are under strict and careful watch. In order to detain the virus from spreading even more, the official in Africa have been limiting travel of sick individuals, which sometimes results in the shutting off of entire villages. The UN World Food Program is currently preparing to deliver food to one million people over the next three months, because access to food, water, and basic necessities have been severely restricted. 

My questions are, now what happens to these quarantined areas? How often is the UN World Food Program going to be able to supply these people with necessities? If these areas are being completely shut off from outside interaction, how soon will it be before they are completely neglected and ignored? Are we going to let a million people die because there just isn't enough resources to provide them with food and water? I think the biggest challenge of this issue is the fact that medical officials are so uncertain about this disease, and also that they don't seem to be very willing to update people on the process of recovery. 

As of August 13, 2,127 cases of Ebola have been reported and 1,145 people have died.