Africa: Border Closures Saved Us
Photo Credit: AP / The Canadian Press, Abdeljalil BounharBY TOM ODULA AND LYNSEY CHUTEL.
Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries – and two of them appear to have snuffed out the disease.
The developments constitute a modest success in an otherwise bleak situation.
Officials credit tighter border controls, good patient-tracking and other medical practices, and just plain luck with keeping Ebola confined mostly to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak was first identified nearly seven months ago.
Senegal did so well in finding and isolating a man with Ebola who had slipped across the border from Guinea in August that the World Health Organization on Friday will declare the end of the disease in Senegal if no new cases surface.
Nigeria is another success story. It had 20 cases and eight deaths after the virus was brought by a Liberian-American who flew from Liberia to Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital of 21 million people, in July. Nearly 900 people were potentially exposed to the virus by the traveler, who died, and the disease could have wreaked havoc in Africa’s most populous nation.
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Rep: CDC worried travel ban over Ebola would hurt African economies
By Fox News.
A Republican lawmaker claims the real reason the Obama administration is opposing a travel ban for Ebola-stricken African countries is that U.S. officials are concerned about hurting their economies — a dollars-and-cents reason, the lawmaker says, doesn’t make much sense.
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., whose House subcommittee held a high-profile hearing Thursday on the Ebola virus, told Fox News that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden is the one who gave him that explanation.
“He explained to me … the concern was that these are fledgling democracies and if we put a travel ban that that may affect their economy and harm them,” Murphy said.
Murphy reiterated the concerns at Thursday’s hearing, charging that public health policies may be “based upon a stated concern with cutting commercial ties with fledgling democracies rather than protecting public health in the United States.”
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Photo Credit: Ahmed Jallanzo / EPA / NewscomUS Embassies in Ebola-Stricken Countries Are Still Processing Visas for Non-US Citizens
By Rob Bluey.
Despite the outbreak of Ebola, it is still possible to get a visa from the three West African countries at the heart of the outbreak, and a key congressman is demanding to know why.
Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, sent a sternly worded letter to Secretary of State John Kerry about the Obama administration’s handling of the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Royce said he was “deeply concerned” U.S. embassies in those countries were continuing to process visas for non-U.S. nationals despite the outbreak of the deadly disease.
An estimated 100 people per day are applying for U.S. visas at the three embassies, according to Royce. “Of course,” he added, “once these individuals are issued a visa by the embassy, they are free to travel to the United States.”
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Photo Credit: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / GettyEbola Travel Bans Enacted by Nearly 30 Countries, but Not US
By Nick Sanchez.
Nearly every African nation has instituted travel bans on West African countries with significant Ebola outbreaks.
Though the Obama administration has insisted travel bans are not necessary, even countries outside of Africa are beginning to start such travel bans, with Colombia and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia on Wednesday adding their names to a growing list of nearly 30 countries that block travelers from virus-stricken Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
African nations including Kenya, Zambia, and South Africa make up the bulk of the countries that have instituted some kind of ban, and now that countries on the other side of the Atlantic have begun imposing restrictions, calls for the U.S. to follow suit have intensified.
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Ebola Escalation Could Trigger Major Food Crisis
By EDITH M. LEDERER.
The global famine warning system is predicting a major food crisis if the Ebola outbreak continues to grow exponentially over the coming months, and the United Nations still hasn’t reached over 750,000 people in need of food in West Africa as prices spiral and farms are abandoned.
On the eve of World Food Day on Thursday, U.N agencies and non-governmental organizations are scrambling to scale up efforts to avert widespread hunger.
“The world is mobilizing and we need to reach the smallest villages in the most remote locations,” Denise Brown, the U.N. World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, said in a statement Wednesday. “Indications are that things will get worse before they improve. How much worse depends on us all.”
WFP has said it needs to reach 1.3 million people in need in hardest-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
So far, the U.N. agency has provided food to 534,000 people, and it expects to reach between 600,000 and 700,000 this month, Bettina Luescher, WFP’s chief spokesperson in North America, told AP. “And we are working hard to reach and scale up to 1.3 million eventually.”
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