Fear spreads faster than Ebola

WHEN contagion break out -- whether it is AIDS in the 1980s, SARS a decade ago or Ebola today -- fear invariably spreads faster than the virus.

Vivid imagination, intense news media coverage, ignorance and natural human fear of the unknown all conspire to defeat reasoned analysis of the facts which, for now at least, are these: Only two cases of Ebola have been diagnosed in the USA, one linked to the other and confined to a tiny part of Dallas. Hardly anyone outside the proximity of those two people has any reason for concern, much less panic, unless there are more cases.

But amid the dreary news that the disease killing 70% of its victims and could produce 10,000 new cases a week by December, there were some striking success stories in the African epicenter of the outbreak:

♦  In 2000, Uganda had the worst Ebola outbreak ever until this year. It killed more than 400 people. But the nation has since learned how to contain the disease, and the last three flare-ups have been contained to 18 cases and eight deaths;

♦ Nigeria has managed to stop the spread of Ebola from neighbouring countries after a handful of cases turned up there;

♦ And in the middle of hard hit Liberia, a huge rubber firm reacted quickly when Ebola struck there that its 80,000 residents were now free of the disease, according to The Wall Street Journal. And that is without the sophisticated medical care available.

The experience so far in Dallas argues for transporting Ebola patients to the four hospitals (in Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska and Montana) specially equipped to handle them. This will work only as long as the number of the victims is small, but it could provide breathing room to train hospital staff and ramp up capacity to handle Ebola patients elsewhere.

The needs are more mundane than high-tech: more protective suits, more hands-on training, better protocols for hazardous waste disposal and, with flu season right around the corner, better ways to separate patients.

As for the inclination to panic, we would do well to look at those who have instinctively responded to the crisis with bravery: the medical professionals who have taken mortal risk to fight the contagion in West Africa, the infected nurse in Dallas who risked her life to help Duncan, and leaders such as Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who set a remarkable example for the US by publicly visiting Duncan's quarantined family and fiancée and helping to take them to a new home.

When people complained, medical experts said because the family had exhibited no signs of the disease, and what Jenkins did was safe. But it was a display of courage and decency, which is exactly the right antidote for an outbreak of fear.

The writer is Ex-Head, Department of Medical Sociology,Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control & Research (IEDCR).