The 2014 Ebola Outbreak: Ethical Use of Unregistered Interventions - Essay Example

"The 2014 Ebola Outbreak: Ethical Use of Unregistered Interventions" is a great example of a paper on infections. Infectious diseases are disorders and infections spread from one person to another either by direct or indirect body contact. The diseases have a wider range of transmission involving parasites, viruses, fungi, and bacteria posing a great danger to human existence. Some of the infectious diseases include measles, whooping cough, malaria, and Ebola. The essay herein analyzes Ebola, which in recent times has become an important global concern and claimed many lives especially in the western part of the African continent. The paper majorly discusses the effects caused by Ebola to the West African countries and the measures to eradicate the disease and the associated challenges.

Summary of the Article

The recent 2014 outbreak of the Ebola pandemic in West Africa created a great distinction between the enormous numbers of reported cases over a wide geographical spread compared to the initial outbreaks. Lack of proper earlier diagnosis and lack of sufficient awareness about the disease has rendered the efforts to prevent Ebola from spreading futile. Other challenges facing the West African countries include lack of functional health systems, unavailability of health workers with sufficient skills, well paid and sufficiently protected in the dangerous working surroundings. Most of the affected countries lack adequate skilled health care personnel to manage to track of affected persons and monitor the development of the disease efficiently (Krech & Kieny, 2014).

Diverse research efforts conducted in the previous years have generated a variety of potential treatments and vaccines that could enhance efforts to prevent and control the Ebola virus from spreading. However, the mechanisms have only proven effective to the animals and not humanity. Poverty in the West African countries is another contributing factor to the spread of Ebola since such countries can only fund small-scale research that fails to generate the best preventive and control measures for the Ebola viruses. Nonetheless, Canada and America have contributed some resources though not sufficient towards the estimation and development of numerous interventions to control and treat the disease. Ebola is still an infectious disease because of the lack of serious attention accorded to it by the poor nations that tend to focus on poverty eradication.

Significance to Course Content and Global Health

The article recommends the establishment of robust health care systems as a means of preventing and controlling the disease-causing virus. Poor nations lack such systems hence the justification of the wide manifestation of the outbreak (Krech & Kieny, 2014). The rich and first-class countries should also invest in their health care sector to control the virus that the immigrants from affected nations can transmit. The article is therefore significant to global health as it suggests mechanisms of preventing and curbing the disease virus’ spread. The article also gives highly trained health care personnel as another essential requirement towards the eradication and control of the disease spread.

Conclusion

Ebola is an infectious disease that requires skilled health care personnel and established systems to prevent and control. The disease claims numerous lives, as the spread is dynamic hence demands attention and hefty investments towards curbing. Proper training of the public on the safety measures of controlling the disease is necessary to help a nation protect them. Nations globally should invest in intensive researches aimed at recommending the best control and preventive measures for the disease’s virus.

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