How Cuba Could Stop the Next Ebola Outbreak
How Cuba Could Stop the Next Ebola Outbreak
West Africa’s medical system was brought within an inch of its life by a devastating epidemic. But Havana could help nurse it back to health.
By Laurie Garrett
May 6, 2015
What follows is a modest proposal. It endeavors to solve three crucial problems all at once: U.S.-Cuba relations; the post-Ebola human resources deficits in physicians for Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; and the scarcity of skilled nurses in those same countries.
When the Ebola virus of the recent outbreak first surfaced, undetected in the village of Meliandou, Guinea, in December 2013, its spread across those countries was in part facilitated by the desperate state of health-care systems in the three poor, post-civil war nations. These countries never did have enough skilled health workers; Ebola has claimed the lives of devastating numbers in their ranks; and slowing the epidemic prompted the nations to lean heavily on the generosity of the Cuban government, which sent physicians to West Africa’s rescue. In many cases, the Cubans toiled inside facilities financed by U.S. taxpayers, and poignantly the U.S. Department of Defense swore willingness to treat infected Cubans should it be necessary — in the Army-built treatment unit outside Monrovia, Liberia.
This dramatic alignment of U.S., Cuban, and African interests, born from the exigencies of the Ebola epidemic, should now be directed to the reconstruction of the health-care systems of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
Liberia, with a population of 4.3 million, had 51 licensed physicians and 1,649 nurses, ambulance drivers, dentists, pharmacists, lab technicians, hospital clerks, and other health personnel. The 6.1 million people of Sierra Leone had just 136 physicians and 2,299 other health-care workers. And Guinea’s population of 11.8 million people were treated by 1,175 physicians and 6,179 other health personnel. (Consider the World Bank’s data for 2010: The United States had 2.4 doctors for every 1,000 Americans, while Guinea had 0.1 physicians for every 1,000 Guineans.)
More:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/06/cuba-ebola-west-africa-doctors/
