A virulent virus outbreak in some Third World country is met with a weak response. Local officials are overwhelmed. A few hardy local and foreign doctors do their best to get the world's attention. The virus spreads despite the best initial efforts from rural areas to an urban centre. The poorest of poor are afflicted first. Read: Slum. The slum is Unsanitary, thickly populated and the slum dwellers are deeply distrustful with a dose of magical thinking. The army closes off the slum to stop the spread of the virus...residents of the virus react by trying to break out of the cordon, causing an already bad situation to get worse.
Unfortunately, this scenario is no longer fantastical it is a reality for West Point: A slum in the capital city of Monrovia, Liberia. The New York Times reports on this in a short piece here.
Dr. Joanne Liu, head of Doctors Without Borders, recently said, “No one yet has the full measure of the magnitude of this crisis.” Asked how much money is needed to squash the outbreak Dr. Liu has said, “I don’t know. We’re making history. We’re facing something we’ve never faced before.”
The New York Times has a good primer to common questions about the virus including the graphic below which you can find here.
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