Ebola Outbreak Of West Africa - 1655 Words

Introduction In the late 1970s, the international community was alarmed by the discovery of the Ebola virus. (Schwarz and Siegl, 1996) It was the ‘causative agent’ (Peters and Peters, 2015) of EHF (Ebola hemorrhagic fever). Ebola stems from a virus family know as Filoviridae. The virus targets various parts of the body causing a critical sickness of fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and in severe cases bleeding. However, infections do not always lead to death. ‘In previous outbreaks, 40-90% of known infections have resulted in death’ (Prevention, 2015) The very first cases were detected near a river found in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. On 23 March 2014, the World Health Organisation (WHO) made the public aware of a new Ebola†¦show more content†¦The Ebola has a strong relevance to the securitisation theory as there were many laws and precautions introduce by governments globally in order to securitise and protect public health. I will analyse my topic by looking at the laws and precautions brought it by various governments internationally and weighing their strengths and weaknesses. Then evaluating my findings and draw conclusions on how effective and efficient the steps taken towards the attempt of securitising Ebola were. 2. Literature View As explained in my introduction Ebola is a virus which targets various parts of the body causing a critical sickness of fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and in severe cases bleeding. On 8 August 2014, the WHO declared Ebola a major public health concern. Soon after there were many cases reported in the US, Liberia, Australia and other varying countries. Once the outbreak occurred, there were international efforts to strengthen health security. However, this pathway quickly changed directions when it was met with very fragile health national systems. The Western governments attempted to build up global health security by introducing advanced medical countermeasures, unfortunately they could not come up with an effective treatment