Worried about Ebola? Build up public healthcare in the developing world
Ebola has already proven to be a public health and economic disaster in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.Thousands are dead. Thousands more will die. The countries are in turmoil, their health care systems pushed beyond the breaking point and their economic development ground to a halt....
Ebola has already proven to be a public health and economic disaster in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Thousands are dead. Thousands more will die. The countries are in turmoil, their health care systems pushed beyond the breaking point and their economic development ground to a halt.
The aid organization, Oxfam, said two weeks ago that the world must supply more money and medical personnel to West Africa if it doesn't want Ebola to become the "definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation."
Fear is driving the response in much of the affluent world, though. For example, politicians are calling for Western countries to shut their borders to West Africa, something experts say would likely worsen an already dangerous and destabilizing public health crisis in a globalized world.
One thing that would keep the world safer from terrifying public health crises like Ebola, doesn't seem to be get a lot of traction, namely investing in public healthcare systems in the developing world.
James Orbinski is one of the world's top experts in global public health, particularly in developing countries riven by strife and crisis.
Dr. Orbinski was the International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), when it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, and he's the co-founder of Dignitas International, which supports people with HIV.
He's an Officer of the Order of Canada and he's the author of An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarianism in the 21st Century. Dr. Orbinski is also the Research Chair in Global Health at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and a professor of medicine at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.