When I told people earlier this month that I was off to West Africa again to cover the Ebola outbreak, the resounding response was, “Isn’t that over yet?” The short answer is no, but there is a lot more to it than that.
The outbreak has been “nearly over” for months. So while “Ebola fatigue” is understandable, it’s also potentially extremely dangerous.
There are still around 20-30 new cases a week in the three worst-affected countries.
Before this outbreak, those numbers would have constituted a major epidemic, but we live in very changed times.
At the height of the outbreak, West Africa was seeing hundreds of new infections a week.
If you are suffering from Ebola fatigue, imagine what it’s like for the millions of people living alongside this invisible killer, which appears to have made itself quite comfortable in West Africa.
Every other Ebola outbreak has lasted just a few months and has affected only a relatively small geographical area.
Before now, the biggest outbreak infected just over 300 people, killing around 280 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This outbreak has so far claimed at least 11,284 lives.
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