Ebola! Who to blame

At the tail end of 2013, there came rumours of a new and very deadly viral disease spreading at an alarming rate all over West Africa but amazingly no one paid attention to this including the world's foremost organisation for health and disease control. The World Health Organisation (WHO) completely misread the situation and it showed how ill prepared the world was in facing a disease spreading on a global scale. 2014 for a large part was a year to forget. It was a year filled with fear for the unknown as most West African countries perhaps with the exception of Nigeria who handled the situation swiftly and decisively, stopping further spread of the virus.The WHO failed to act on the problems it was facing by dragging it's heel in declaring the Ebola virus a worldwide epidemic. The disease ravaged many countries in West Africa including Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and briefly Nigeria leaving over 8810 people dead including health workers. The virus briefly troubled some parts of Europe and the USA although these cases were isolated and effectively treated. With new rumours surfacing in the last few days that the virus was mutating at an alarming rate (although not airborne yet), the WHO organisation and other foremost health groups around the world have to do some soul searching and ask why the situation was allowed to get to its present state . Although the number of reported cases has declined in the three countries still fighting the virus there are still hotspots where the virus is still rampant as most of these cases are not reported. According to a WHO report, Liberia had just one doctor for 100,000 people while Sierra Leone had two for a 100,000 people. Guinea had no data. Entire societies and communities have been torn apart by this disease. There is a stigma placed on those who have survived the illness while people believe that the dead who have been burnt are abominations as it is a taboo in West Africa to burn the dead. Health systems have totally collapsed and now the responsibility of ensuring the sustainability of life falls on the Western and more advanced countries to fund and help this impoverished region and hope for the best.