Ebola - The Worst Case Scenario?
Despite new promises of UN action, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is spreading at an accelerating rate.Despite new commitments this week from the world's governments, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is not under control and will get worse - possibly much worse - before it gets better. Experts fear the number affected will be in the tens of thousands, possibly even more. Laurie Garrett is Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and writes for the journal Foreign Policy. Her books include The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. She fears that we're paying the price now for gutting our international public health capacity with cuts to the World Health Organization. The promise of a massive effort by many countries in West Africa may be too little, too late, to prevent the worst case scenario of a complete breakdown of social order and devastation to a whole region of Africa by this terrible disease.
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Ms. Garrett's recent articles in Foreign Policy:
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