Ebola Crisis: The
Emerging Threat
Effects to Countries
The Ebola Virus has had devestating results for the lives of people living in Western African Countries affected. Already some of the poorest nations in the World, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea struggle to find finance and expertise to deal with virus. This has resulted in many wide spread long term impacts to the countries both socially, econonomically and politically.
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The 2014 Ebola Outbreak in Western Africa started started in Guinea. Since then it has spread to neighbouring countries Sierra Leone and Liberia. This is because these are some of the freest borders between countries in the world, with many people crosssing daily for work, to find food and to see family.
Therefore, any cases of Ebola were very difficult to track and it was unclear which governements responsibility it was. The poor response contributed to why this epidemic went unnoticed for 3 months.
Western African Countries Affected
Socio-Economic Effects
There are many resulting social and economic effects, not just to Ebola infected western African countries, but globally across a wider area.
These impacts will vary in the time they affect a country for, such as long term, mid term and short term. This is due to differences in levels of development and money available to return economies back to 'normal'.
The outbreak of a virus not previously seen in western africa before, this meant that governemrnts were slow to respond and also lacked the experience and knowledge.
Therefore, the virus quicly spread. This in turn may result in many political effects in the longer term.
Further Spread
Wider areas affeted:
Nigeria
Spain
UK
USA
Kenya & South Africa - Tourism industries
Other significant factors to why there was slow detection of the virus:
1) The intial symptoms of Cholera and Malaria are similar to Ebola. These diseases are very prevelent across these 3 countries, thus meaning the symptoms were not unusual.
2) Although cases of Ebola have occured before in Africa, all previous outbreaks have been in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. 1995 Democratic Republic of Congo).
This meant that govenements, aid workers and locals had no previous experience and knowledge of how to recognise, or deal with the spread of the virus outbreak.