Ebola: an unwanted guest

But how well prepared are we and what would be the public reaction? Our response to epidemics of infectious disease over the last 150 years has not always been orderly, well planned and does not raise our confidence. During periods of epidemic crisis, States have fought with States and with the Commonwealth over issues of quarantine and isolation and the best way to manage the outbreak. The outbreaks of smallpox, plague, polio and influenza over the last 100 or so years put to the test and challenged the Commonwealth and States’ comprehension and management of epidemic events and frequently found them wanting.

In addition, fear, hysteria and panic have been widespread and people’s confidence that the government could protect them severely undermined. Ebola is for most people a frightening and mysterious disease and our experience of SARS, Avian and Swine Flu shows just how human reaction to so-called ‘new’ infections can result in great outpourings of public fear, hysteria and panic which in many ways overwhelms the simple number of cases and deaths.

It is all very well to have in place control measures, special isolation hospitals as well as trained medical staff in masks, goggles and special gowns, but what about understanding and managing the human reaction that the appearance of an ebola case might produce? The ebola virus does not transmit very easily to humans so why is there so much fear and hysteria?

Well, in part this stems from the very high fatality rates associated with the disease, partly because there is no vaccine or specific treatment available, and partly because people are more moved by the tempest than by gentle rain and the emergence of a new mysterious and deadly infectious disease would undoubtedly produce substantial public reaction. Add to this the media’s ability to swamp us with endless stories and pictures of ebola and its frightful toll in Africa and it’s not surprising that our reaction borders on apprehension, fear and sometimes even panic.

At the moment there is no specific treatment available although some hope centres on a new experimental drug developed by a biotech company in California.  The irony in this is that it takes a threat to Developed Western nations before such drugs appear. Had the ebola epidemic remained ‘isolated’ in West Africa and posed no threat to ‘us’ would we have pushed for such a cure to be forthcoming? And should such drugs be immediately made available to those infected in West Africa?

The jury is still out.