Lyra500
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- Jan 19, 2014
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Although at this point I believe this will be contained, yet, I can't help but wonder about future issues as flights to that part of Africa are allowed to continue.
I'm also concerned b/c my niece--age 28--has recently become involved in a charitable organization where she will be traveling to S. Africa this month to work with AIDS patients. I think it's crazy for her to be going, if it were my daughter I would be all but tying her to the bed rather than "letting" her go.
After staying in Africa for about 4 weeks, she will travel to Thailand, before she returns home, right before christmas.
Talk about 1 person potentionally wreaking havoc!!! I know I probably sound crazy paranoid, but I can't help it.
South Africa is over 3,500 miles away from Sierra Leone, 3,300 from Liberia and over 3,600 miles from Guinea.
The Ebola outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal which are right next door to the 'Hot Zone' appear to be all but over due to effective contact tracing and isolation measures.
So I have to ask:
- Why do people seem determined to expect Ebola to run rampant across the USA - are people really suggesting that US Public Health and public education are that much worse than Nigeria and Senegal. So incompetent and hapless that they cannot achieve what Nigeria and Senegal have achieved? Really?
- Why would an infection outbreak in West Africa mean that someone should not travel to another African country with no record of ever having harboured Ebola and which is situated over 3000 miles away?
I understand that Ebola is scary, but I think we should try and remain rational about the whole thing.
PH will be working their way through the contact map that they have built up by tracing the movements of this individual. They will be approaching, interviewing and monitoring people in order of risk. They will be asking those people who they have been in contact with since they came into contact with the infected patient. All those people will be painstakingly recorded and monitored for the maximum potential incubation period.
This is how PH infectious disease control is done - laborious, but when done properly, it works.