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Helping Africa crucial in managing our risk
Joanna Kiernan
19/10/2014
Based on figures coming from the World Health Organisation, Professor Sam McConkey has calculated that the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone alone could rise to over 40,000 new infections per week. Photo credit: AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh
Ireland's leading infectious disease expert says we should work to contain Ebola in West Africa, rather than focusing only on the threat it poses should a case present here.
Professor Sam McConkey, head of Department of International Health and Tropical Medicine in the Royal College of Surgeons, who has lived in Sierra Leone in the past, believes that Ireland must concentrate efforts on staving off the spread of Ebola by helping those in the most affected countries such as Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia to halt the disease.
"What's happening in West Africa since June is really something that none of us could ever have imagined," Prof McConkey told the Sunday Independent. "The Ebola epidemic has grown so much there that the basic structures of government, of water, electricity, of the government being able to act meaningfully and run education has stopped. Hospitals are not functioning.
"Many nurses and doctors have died, others are not coming to work. Many people are trying to leave the city of Freetown to go to more rural areas, where they feel it will be safer."
Based on figures coming from the World Health Organisation, Prof McConkey has calculated that the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone alone could rise to over 40,000 new infections per week 240 days from now, should the disease continue to spread at the current rate.
Prof McConkey said that the situation in West Africa is likely to result in a "nightmare scenario", killing off a substantial amount of the nations' population, if nothing is done.
"In the last week, many epidemiologists when they look at this data are absolutely terrified," he added. "And what's happening in Liberia is even worse because the WHO are saying we have no idea how many cases there are because our ability to count the cases has been completely overwhelmed. If we just do nothing and let this epidemic spread and grow through Sierra Leone and Liberia, it's going to end up burning through West Africa and there is inevitably going to be an increase in the cases coming to Europe and America.
"This is like the house six doors down from your house burning. Do you call the fire brigade to come and put out the fire six doors down? Or do you start carrying water to your own front door and closing your windows and securing your own house? You call the fire brigade, because your home's integrity is best served by putting the fire out down the road," Prof McConkey said.
"My view is that we now need to start thinking about the bigger picture here and about what we can do to help. This is a problem in West Africa of unimaginable proportions and I think we need to be diverting our concerns there, because if we can prevent the fire in West Africa then we won't be at risk at all."
A total of 8,997 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of Ebola have now been reported in seven affected countries: Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, and the US. There have been over 4,500 deaths, 236 of which have been health-care workers. In response to this unprecedented epidemic, the first-ever UN emergency health mission, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, has been set up.
In the light of the UN health mission, it emerged last week that Defence Minister Simon Coveney had raised the possibility of Irish troops being sent to West Africa to help halt the disease's spread.
However, the suggestion was rejected by Health Minister Leo Varadkar and junior minister Sean Sherlock at a Government Emergency Planning Committee meeting, due to health-and-safety concerns for the troops in question.
The US is deploying up to 4,000 troops to West Africa to help contain the spread of the disease.
Sunday Independent