Too serious to ignore

Ebola continues to make headlines, with the virus stealthily reaching far-away shores, like the US and Spain.

So far, more than 3,400 people succumbed to the disease and some 7,000 have been diagnosed with it.

There are fears that the number of people who contracted the killer virus is much higher than that of the victims already identified.

The aggressiveness of the disease, most often lethal, made the UN Security Council adopt, on September 18, a resolution acknowledging the seriousness of the West Africa Ebola outbreak.

“The gravity and scale of the situation now requires a level of international action unprecedented for an emergency,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Director General of the World Health Organisation Margaret Chan said there is an urgent need to catch up to the fast-moving, deadly Ebola outbreak in a pragmatic way, as in the hardest-hit countries, a growing caseload threatened to push governments to the brink of state failure.

“This is likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced,” she said, pointing to the unprecedented scale of the emergency, degree of suffering and magnitude of consequences.

“This is not just an outbreak. This is not just a public crisis.  This is a social crisis, a humanitarian crisis, an economic crisis and a threat to national security well beyond the outbreak zones.”

Humanity rarely stirs in its comfort zone if not challenged. Yet, like many other “unexpected” and unpredicted matters — the spread of the Islamic State disease springs to mind — problems have a way of catching us unawares, so vigilance is absolutely necessary.

This is no innocuous virus, and if now it appears mostly “contained” in a few unfortunate African countries, it should not lull us into a false sense of security.

The US and Spanish cases prove that distant lands are not entirely immune to this WHO-classified epidemic.

The disease will continue to kill as long as there is no effective medication to stop it.

By declaring this health crisis a serious threat, the UN is merely underlining the fact that the right to health is a basic element of the right to life, which, in turn, is the foundation of national, regional and international security.

Paragraph C of Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulates that states must take measures to prevent, treat and control epidemic, endemic and occupational diseases.

The UN Security Council sounded the alarm. Extra precautionary health measures need to be introduced by all countries to step the spread of Ebola.

International action is needed as a matter of high priority to deal with the disease and pharmaceutical companies have to work against the clock to come up with an effective vaccine.

Given the fact that the world today is but a small village where contact among people is easy, there is no way to prevent any epidemic from spreading across the planet.