The Ebola Outbreak

        Back in December 2013, the world faced the worst virus disease outbreak it had ever known. It was said to be as if people were watching a zombie movie with all the screaming and craziness. In Africa, bats were suspected of carrying a deadly virus, yet not many people were aware of this fact. The Ebola outbreak was traced back to a couple village kids who went into the forest and collected some bats and proceeded to eat them. After that, one of those little kids started to experience high fever, shivering, followed by two days of diarrhea, which lead to his death. That was only Day 1 of the virus. Villagers thought that it was a curse, or even as far as witchcraft, as his following family members died shortly after him. No one knew what was going on, let alone that it could possibly be Ebola. For 3 months, it was mistaken for malaria.
       There were many major problems that took place during the response period for the outbreak. There were tragic and mishandled steps when it came to resolving it. The response to the Ebola outbreak was a global failure, one that could have been avoided, if the proper responses would have been in place from the beginning. The first issue was how quickly it spread, without understanding what it was. The key to stopping Ebola was to isolate the sick, monitor anyone who had contact with the infected and safely bury the dead. Yet, none of these steps were properly executed.  When someone died because of it, people would touch the body, or it would be left on the streets for days before it was properly buried. There was also no record of who was with the infected before their death, so the number of people in contact was much higher than accounted for.
        The second issues was that the only organization that had ever dealt with Ebola was the World Health Organization (WHO). However, the major problem was that they didn't take the lead in the investigation and the quick response that this virus required. Instead, the WHO let their officials in Guinea, who had never dealt with it before, take the lead. Likewise, was the case in Sierra Leone when it spread, the government left this disease in the hands of an American company called Metabiota, who had never dealt with it before either. This was a major problem because at the rate that the disease was spreading and the amount of people who had passed in the first 3 months, it should have been clear that this wasn't just the ordinary flu.
     The third issue with the response to the outbreak was that every "official" that was in charge of making a decision, downscaled the size and problem of this epidemic. They started to only document confirmed cases and left every other one unaccounted for. This was a major issue because those that were left unaccounted for were spreading into different borders. Since no one was acknowledging the problem at hand, the WHO refused to declare an international health emergency. This should have happened after they saw how rapidly it was spreading and how many people were dying. In class, we discussed the meaning of labeling something a security issue and the cause of a speech act, but in this case, that was what exactly should have been done. With an outbreak that was uncontrollable and confusing, labeling it a security issue internationally was a proper response.