Panic Not Advised

"Every health-care professional (in Canada), every emergency management service and every hospital emergency department needs to be prepared."
"Panic is not productive. But I think there has to be a high level of respect for the fact this virus spreads."
Dr. Dick Zoutman leading scientific adviser during the SARS crisis of 2003, Canada

"This is the largest, most severe and most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of this disease."
"[The World Health Organization declaration] alerts the world to the need for high vigilance for possible cases of Ebola virus disease, but by no means implies that all countries, or even many countries, will see Ebola cases."
"[It is, however a]  clear call for international solidarity. [Affected countries] simply don't have the capacity to manage the outbreak on their own."
Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general, WHO

"I would suspect that even if it affected Canadians the mortality rate would be significantly lower than it is in West Africa. None of this makes it like a global emergency situation. It's a storm in a teacup."
Udo Schuklenk, bioethics expert, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

"I think the level of anxiety is definitely high out there."
"This is not a mysterious disease. This is something that can be stopped."
Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general, WHO

The Public Health Agency of Canada has warned Canadians that the best manner in which to practise avoidance is to commit to avoiding non-essential travel to Guinea Liberia, and Sierra Leone. And perhaps, now that Nigeria has experienced its own nascent outbreak, that most populous of African countries as well. As soon as anyone presents to any hospital in the West with fever and the information they've returned from western Africa they're whisked to an isolation unit.

WHO recommends that affected countries struggling with the Ebola outbreaks should conduct "exit screenings" of all travellers at international airports, seaports and major land crossings checking for fever and other likely symptoms of infection, often mistaken for malaria, and often enough turning out to be malarial, not Ebola infection. How efficiently and effectively that can be managed in the affected countries is a reflection of their effectiveness in isolating patients as well.

The United States has welcomed back two of its citizens, a doctor and a humanitarian aid group volunteer, both of whom contracted Ebola from treating affected patients in the course of their humanitarian work. They have been placed in isolation in Atlanta, and were given a new, unproved but apparently successful experimental medication, not readily available for use anywhere else, and in 'short supply' even in the U.S.

Liberian nurses remove an Ebola victim from a street in Virginia, and right, President Jonathan [EPA / GETTY]

And a hospital in Brampton, Ontario, has isolated an individual -- as a precautionary move since the patient was exhibiting flu-like symptoms similar to the characteristics of the Ebola virus -- who had recently returned from a trip to Nigeria. The minimal outbreak there had occurred when a man had flown from Liberia to Nigeria and presented as symptomatic of having contracted Ebola. Hospitalized in Nigeria, he died a few days later.

And Nigerian health authorities since then have attempted to contact and locate the passengers and crew who came in contact with him during that fateful flight. The nurse who tended to the man in hospital has herself now succumbed to the virus, and another seven people are being investigated, suspected of having contracted the disease. Yet another 139 Nigerians are under medical surveillance, causing President Goodluck Jonathan to declare an emergency in his country.


According to WHO, the movement of people exiting and entering those specific countries of western Africa should be minimized, enforced if necessary by the military and strict quarantine measures be implemented as required. Unaffected countries are to be prepared to "detect, investigate and manage" possible cases and to help evacuate and repatriate nationals like health workers exposed to Ebola, cautions the WHO.

In that part of Africa, conflict has taken its toll on their health systems. Leaving them with a shortage of health workers and fewer critical supplies than they should have, including personal protective gear and rudimentary needs such as running water and reliable electricity systems. Doctors Without Borders, committed as they are to such hot spots throughout the world, warn that the epidemic has reached "out of control" status and they have reached their limits of what their teams can accomplish.

The virus now kills an average of 60 percent of those infected. Direct contact with blood and other bodily fluids transmits the virus. Fear, misinformation and suspicion fuel the spread of this dread virus. Villagers hide their infected  people, in preference to allowing them to be sent to health facilities and special isolation units for treatment, and that reactive fear is spreading. As the fear spreads, so will the incidence of infection.