With the World Health Organization predicting perhaps 10,000 new cases of Ebola per week in Africa by the end of December, and with infections cropping up now in Europe and the United States, there is no denying humanity faces a dramatic health crisis.
The world must do much more to contain it.
Statistics point to a dire situation in West Africa. More than 4,400 deaths, nearly 9,000 confirmed cases, a 70 percent mortality rate, and an utterly overwhelmed health care system there add up to disaster.
The United States has committed $400 million to the fight, as well as nearly 600 military personnel on the ground in the most affected countries, building treatment facilities and mobile laboratories.
Other nations are pitching in, as well. Even individuals are helping, notably Bay Area resident and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who this week donated $25 million to the cause.
Finger-pointing has begun, with some blasting the Dallas hospital where one patient died and two health care workers were infected for slipshod procedures. Others have criticized the Obama administration for a slow response.
How about blaming Congress for slashing the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health? NIH director Dr. Francis Collins said in an interview that had his budget not been cut, “We probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would have gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”
We as a community must do all we can to halt the contagion, heal the sick and aid our fellow human beings. American Jewish World Service, for example, has launched an emergency fund to provide assistance in affected areas. It is but one Jewish organization stepping up.
Israel is also lending a hand, sending mobile field hospitals to Liberia and Sierra Leone in cooperation with IsraAID, a non-governmental organization known around the world for its crisis support in places like quake-ravaged Haiti and Japan. IsraAID also has been tapped to lead the multinational psychosocial support efforts on the ground, in conjunction with the World Health Organization and International Red Cross.
Shachar Zahavi, IsraAID’s founding director, has put out a call for volunteer doctors, nurses and paramedics to set up the field clinics with supplies provided by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and he told the L.A. Jewish Journal that his agency expects to be on the ground for two years, at least.
We applaud these efforts by the Jewish and Israeli communities in fighting this deadly scourge.