As WHO Warns Ebola Death Toll is Underestimated, How Should Global Community Handle Dire Crisis?

Transcript

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The World Health Organization is now saying the number of reported cases and deaths of Ebola in West Africa vastly underestimates the scale of the outbreak. The official death toll from the Ebola outbreak is now at 1,069 since February. Guinea has become the fourth country in Africa to declare a national health emergency as it battles the spread of the deadly Ebola virus in the worst outbreak since the disease was discovered in 1976. The outbreak began in Guinea, where it has killed 377 people. It has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, which have all declared a national health emergency.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, the World Health Organization said the unprecedented outbreak of the Ebola virus was an international public health emergency. Ebola’s initial flu-like symptoms can lead to external hemorrhaging and internal bleeding, which can lead to organ failure. The disease is highly infectious and can kill up to 90 percent of those afflicted. Patients have a better chance of survival if they receive early treatment. There is no cure for Ebola, but the first consignment of the experimental drug ZMapp has arrived in Liberia from the U.S. The World Health Organization has approved the distribution of unproven drugs to help address the Ebola outbreak. World Health Organization Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny said the decision was made despite tests that failed to prove the drugs are safe and effective.

MARIE-PAULE KIENY: For the first time, we have a range of potential treatments and vaccines that could be potent assets supporting our efforts to control Ebola virus disease. However, while several of these treatments have been proven to be very effective in nonhuman primates—and I mean mostly rhesus macaques—none have undergone the test in humans necessary for licensing as proven safe and effective treatments. That does not mean that they are not safe. It simply means we do not have the evidence from human studies to say that it is certain that they are safe and efficacious.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny. The outbreak has sparked an international debate over the ethics of giving such untested drugs to the sick and of deciding who should get the drugs.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk about implications of the crisis, we’re joined by three guests.

Laurie Garrett is with us, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for her coverage of an Ebola outbreak in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the author of two best-selling books, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health.

In Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Lawrence Gostin, university professor and faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights.

And in Providence, Rhode Island, we’re joined by Adia Benton, a medical anthropologist at Brown University. She has conducted research on infectious disease in Sierra Leone over several years.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Laurie Garrett. Laurie, just explain what Ebola is, for starters, and then talk about what you think we should understand about it.

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