It has already claimed more than 1,400 lives, yet the Ebola virus continues to spread across West Africa. On August 8, an emergency committee of the World Health Organization unanimously agreed to declare the virus a public health emergency of international concern, calling for a coordinated international response to stop the spread of the disease. Consequently, India’s health ministry has put in place several elaborate precautionary measures, including extensive screening of all airline passengers arriving from Ebola-hit regions of West Africa.
Despite these efforts, India’s somewhat panicked response to Ebola is indication of the power of media-led hysteria – and how it can set the priorities of an otherwise fragile system of public health. A number of public health experts have argued in the wake of this global spread of news about the disease that attempts to build a more proactive approach to disease control are actually hampered by these bouts of overwrought interest in one disease or the other.
29/08/14 Udit Thakur/Scroll.in
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Despite these efforts, India’s somewhat panicked response to Ebola is indication of the power of media-led hysteria – and how it can set the priorities of an otherwise fragile system of public health. A number of public health experts have argued in the wake of this global spread of news about the disease that attempts to build a more proactive approach to disease control are actually hampered by these bouts of overwrought interest in one disease or the other.
29/08/14 Udit Thakur/Scroll.in
