Fears, superstition, paranoia and slow international response is cause of widespread Ebola outbreak

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that the current West African Ebola outbreak is the most challenging the world has seen in the last few decades.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "[You have] a very lethal disease, placed in a setting where the health infrastructure is very weak," said Dr. Keiki Fukuda, an American physician with expertise in influenza epidemiology and the assistant director-general for health security at the WHO.

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"It's an area where there's a lot of cross-border movements of people. I think it's also a situation where it's been hard to get enough international workers and responders into the area," he said.

The United States is one of the few countries that has made a quick and powerful response, sending aid, experimental drugs, and medical teams to the worst hit areas.

President Barack Obama is set to deploy 3,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines to Liberia to ensure that aid supplies are properly handed out and not raided, and is also going to have two laboratories delivered to Liberia.

While the response from the U.S. and a few other countries, like France, may help, the lack of greater international aid at the beginning of the outbreak and a weak local medical infrastructure greatly exacerbated the spread of the outbreak.

"If the capacity that we seek to urgently [implement] the global security agenda had been in place, it's likely the Ebola crisis would not have so severe," said Laura Holgate, a senior official from the National Security Council.

"The reality is that Ebola has already killed four times the number of people that SARS did over a decade ago. Such a dramatic threat requires a long-term commitment as well as an urgent, immediate response," she said. "This is not a choice we make between these two styles. We must be doing them at the same time together and mindful of each other."

While the support and aid from the international community has stepped up recently, more will be needed to deal with food supplies, security and even economic concerns in the region Fukuda acknowledged.

The bottom line is that "this is a disease for which people, organizations and countries are afraid of because it's infectious disease with a high mortality [rate]."

"We have to develop a reliable plan for international workers so they can be evacuated if needed or if health workers become sick. Getting [this agenda] firmly in place is one of those critical issues right now," Fukuda said.

Part of the solution will be getting people who are infected with Ebola to come out to aid workers and not hide. This will help that person survive, and stop further spread of the virus.

Dr. Melvin Korkor contracted Ebola while treating a patient at a hospital in Liberia and wants to advise his fellow Africans not to hide it.

"I was so compassionate, I touched her without my [usual] precaution practices. So, a few days later I felt sick," Korkor said. "I isolated myself from my family and later my lab results tested positive. I was transferred to Monrovia treatment center. Because I am a doctor and I knew what to do, I survived the virus."

"If you [think] you have Ebola, don't hide yourself, don't keep away, come to the hospital at the earliest possible [moment] and you'll be saved."

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