Stringent measures needed

THE Ebola epidemic will stay with us for a long time unless the proper stringent measures are put in place to contain it.

If one bears in mind that no virus of any kind has ever been cured in the sense that it is banished forever from the body by medical intervention, including the common cold, it follows that the only way Ebola will be eradicated, is for it to run its course, and that infected people are kept as comfortable as possible and isolated.

It is a terrible truth that the spread of this virus is most likely to be by the international people working in West Africa so bravely to assist wherever possible. Most of the folk from Sierra Leone and Liberia have not the recourses to climb on a plane to go anywhere, but the health workers do, and regrettably, they are by far the major threat to the spread of this disease internationally.

The local people, terrified by this terrible onslaught, are likely to make a run for it and in the process, contaminate others.

What needs to happen, with the full co-operation of the relevant governments and all applicable personnel, is a total military style lockdown of the infected countries and within those countries, high risk areas that have been identified. There needs to be temporary accommodation villages established for medical personnel equipped with isolation areas where persons wishing to leave the country to return home are kept in quarantine through the three week incubation period, and then when declared Ebola free, sent home.

These are tough measures and undeniably harsh for the folk doing what most of us would not dare, and to that end they should be generously compensated, but it is the only way to contain the spread.

Conor Ward, Addo