Reading about Ebola is heart breaking.

I've been reading a bit about the Ebola outbreak the last few days. You can have this vague idea in the back of your head that there's an extremely rare but devastating illness in West Africa but the actual reality of it not hit home. West Africa is a long way away, the numbers still sound kinda low, but when you look a little closer, there are over now 7000 confirmed cases and they suspect the actual number of cases to be 2-3 times that. Each person is infecting about 2 others. The fatality rate is about 70%. Those are really overwhelming figures.

Then there is the lived experience of these people. They are nursed in isolation facilities and most will die a gruesome death, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding and multiple organ failure, with only strangers in spacesuits with them. Or they are amongst the uncounted cases in the community, cared for mostly by women at home, who are almost inevitably going to be infected themselves as the virus spread through the body fluids that will inevitably be everywhere.

And this is all in some of the poorest areas of the world. Sanitation is limited at the best of times, and this is not one of them. Health care services are limited and completely unprepared to deal with this outbreak.  Wars, corruption, civil unrest and so forth make it more difficult to access care or have built mistrust in government systems.  In short, the virus couldn't have picked a better place to ensure its own survival. My heart also aches for the health care workers in these places. Many, especially local workers, would not have the equipment available to protect them, or the knowledge of the risk before it was too late. They too are dying in large numbers.  Special facilities have been set up to provide care, but it is a small fortune in equipment, water and chemicals to contain the virus within them. But not only does West Africa need money, equipment and chemicals, it needs health care workers. These people not only face the risk of catching Ebola, but also watching the tragedy of it. Imagine caring for a population who are suffering terribly and 70% of them will die within days. The strength of these people is amazing, but supportive care can reduce mortality to 30%. That's a huge difference that medical teams can have.

In the face of all of this, the richer world has been slow to act. Even now, with countries sending medical staff and military assistance to build treatment centres, Australia is offering only a small amount of money. We carry on about burkas, conduct terrorist raids for toy swords and send military troops and equipment to Iraq, but only a few million to control a humanitarian crisis spiraling out of control. Even if you only wanted to be selfish about it, Ebola is spreading at such a rate that it will become a crisis for more than just West Africa. A much bigger global threat than terrorism. More people have died in Liberia in the last few months than in the Sept 11 attacks. But hey, it's all happening to black people in Africa right now, so who cares?