Heading Off a Bigger Ebola Catastrophe

Tuesday, September 2, 2014
By Paul Martin

A more urgent international effort in West Africa is needed to stop the disease and save tens of thousands of lives.

By Scott Gottlieb And
Tevi Troy
WSJ.com
Sept. 1, 2014

The Ebola virus, which has already killed more than 1,500 people since the epidemic began earlier this year, is wreaking havoc in West Africa, leaving death, economic hardship, social stigma and civil unrest in its wake.

In response, the Obama administration has stressed that the disease is highly unlikely to spread inside America. Given international travel, we will certainly see cases diagnosed here, and perhaps even experience some isolated clusters of disease. For now, though, the administration’s assurances are generally correct: Health-care workers in the U.S. and other advanced Western nations maintain infection controls that can curtail the spread of non-airborne diseases like Ebola.

Yet our ability to prevent an epidemic here doesn’t reduce our obligations abroad. Even if the epidemic remains only in West Africa, the continued spread of Ebola infections could eventually rank as one of the cruelest natural catastrophes of recent times—if not in human death and suffering, then certainly in the economic and social devastation caused by declining commerce, restricted travel and the strife resulting from mass quarantines. Compared with a storm that delivers its destruction all at once, the swelling nature of a viral epidemic can magnify its impact on economic and civil life.

To address this problem, the U.S. should lead an immediate effort to assist stricken nations in West Africa. This effort should have three main elements.

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