Just wanted to call your attention to this, from Global 3000 (Deutsche Welle's globalization/development programme)
It was uploaded yesterday, so it is very recent, but predates yesterday's first positive Ebola diagnosis in Mali.
Watch if you can--only about 6 minutes long and very informative.
Now, as for Mali, that is what we should be talking about--but NY has moved it off the radar. Not that NY isn't important and worth discussing--but the NY case in itself--barring something going horribly, implausibly wrong--really doesn't have too many broader implications. Mali's case does.
First, the human angle. Like most Ebola stories in W. Africa, it is very sad. A 2 year old girl, from Mali originally, contracted the disease in Guinea--most likely from a parent (one parent--I believe her mother--died from the disease). Her grandmother and possibly other relatives took her back to Mali, where they spent some time in the capital, Bamako. Bamako is a densely populated city of 2 million. Mali is now intensively trying to trace all contacts they may have had--I don't know the current status of the girl's illness--and I assume that to date no relatives have tested positive. As we've seen in W. Africa, this could unfortunately change.
Mali's borders with Guinea, interestingly--and perhaps detrimentally--have remained open because (as discussed in the video), many residents of Mali regularly go to guinea for business/trade. The epidemic in Guinea has already hurt local economies in Mali--one Malian shopkeeper in the video buys peanuts, soap, gas, and other items cheaply from Guinea--and price increases are hurting his business. Other borders (e.g. between the afflicted countries, and Cote d'Ivoire's border with Liberia), have remained closed. It is quite possible that this has partially accounted for the lack of cases in Cote d'Ivoire since, as noted in the most recent WHO status update:
Of the eight Guinean and Liberian districts that share a border with C te d Ivoire, only the
Guinean district of Mandiana is yet to report a confirmed or probable case of EVD.
WHO Status Update, Oct. 22
Now, this situation is far different from border questions here in the U.S. because those countries in W. Africa suffer from poor infrastructure, severely weakened health systems, and heavy flow of people back and forth--so they have reasons to keep the borders closed with a raging epidemic next door. It remains to be seen what Mali's response to the border situation is going to be.
A bit more post-fold...
Politically and infrastructurally, Mali is quite a bit worse-off than Nigeria--although both have seen their share of political unrest in places. Mali's stability is more in question--still dealing with repercussions from the conflict in the north of the country here which has done substantially more to destablize the country than Boko Haram in Nigeria.
Ultimately, the case of this girl is one case, and hopefully she will pull through and they'll have the success of Nigeria and Senegal. But this is nowhere near over---Mali itself wont' know where things stand from this index case for another week or two, and border crossings will likely continue and it is not hard to imagine the epidemic spreading. Mali is also a huge country that borders several others. So all the considerations mentioned above come into play all over again.
Final thing about why this is so important is that each new country affected demands a whole new shift in resources, personnel, international aid, etc. etc. The way the WHO works with Sierra Leone is not going to be the way they work with Liberia or Mali or Cote d'Ivoire--internal bureaucracy, and corruption, and slow delivery times, and declining infrastructure are all things that the international community has to work with local/regional/state administration within these countries to handle. And resources that might once have been able to move elsewhere are going to have to look inward. It's that much more work that has to be done.
Which brings me to my final point: the case in New York. It's awful that a guy in NY--someone who is dedicating his life to helping others--has come down with this illness. But it shouldn't really affect anything in the United States. It shouldn't, but that isn't to say it won't. The obscene media circus that we get for each individual case in the U.S. diverts resources, time, funding and attention from places like Mali, Liberia, Guinea, Congo or Sierra Leone where it is absolutely needed. The brighter the spotlight on NY or Dallas, the dimmer it is on Mali and these other, much worse affected countries.
Hyperbolic spotlights on our own individual cases provide the GOP with fodder to cut funding from abroad to feed the fear at home, they distract ordinary citizens from donating to groups like MSF who are working abroad, they force the CDC to mobilize internally instead of externally.
Paradoxically, it's that internal focus that will adversely affect what happens far beyond our borders--and if Ebola is going to ever come back to REALLY bite us--that's how it's going to happen: by us not paying any attention.
Just some thoughts. Wash your hands, and don't fear the Ebola.
1:45 PM PT: sad update: reports coming across the wire are saying that the girl has died in the western city of Kayes.
6:01 PM PT: It's 3:00 am in Spain, so I'm going to sleep. Will try to answer any new comments tomorrow if I can.
7:12 PM PT: OK, not asleep yet--but a friend sent me this depressing yet incredible article about Ebola survivors in Liberia....not too long, and absolutely worth the read. Here
Sat Oct 25, 2014 at 9:17 AM PT: With reference to the border closing issue in W. Africa, Mauritania has closed its border with Mali in response to the crisis (via bbc).