Ebola

Just read in today's Times that a man 'found dead in Ireland was suspected to have been infected with the Ebola virus' (quote from Irish health authority. He'd recently returned from Sierra Leone.

rosequartz i think the problem the Australians have (not enough water to lead an affluent lifestyle with power showers and green lawns with sprinkler systems) is a tad different to the African problem - a lack of piped water so that little girls and old women have to spend many hours a day carrying water for miles. And no safe water - untreated water and a lack of sanitation increases the chances of human parasites entering watercourses etc
Meanwhile many Australians complain that they cannot spray high quality treated drinking water on their gardens every day.
It costs a lot of money to make drinking water safe in this country - look at your water bill and multiply by the number of households. And the basic investment has all been done.I think privatisation of water was a success in this country as it forced a massive upgrade of the out of date system - but now western companies are trying to impose it on people who have very low incomes and I think a public investment model would be more appropriate.
I was amused by the reference to smelly poms. I have mentioned this on other threads.

That is a very good point, WB. We can contribute through WaterAid to help bring water to African villages that may not otherwise have clean water, whilst perhaps in the same country a leader and his wife can afford to live in palaces and lead the affluent lifestyle of billionaires.

I dont think it is quite as simple as blaming the big bad west for everything that happens in Africa. To my eye, and I am no expert, with few exceptions, African countries are run by despots who are able to find the money to fund their own disgustingly affluent lifestyles, buy arms etc., but cant find the money to run stand pipes of clean water into villages. There was an excellent report in The Economist a couple of years back, one of the major charities had to pay what amounted to a backhander of £200,000 to a local politician to enable them to run the water pipe from the bore hole that we, the big bad west, had paid for through our charity donations. I for one, am tired of being made to feel guilty about this disgraceful situation, if a country can arm people, they can feed and water them properly too.

Sorry Whitewave

Whitwave Well put, the situation in a nutshell.

Yes enlightened people have been saying that for decades, but largely it is true that no profit = no investment by the western world.
Africa is in hock to it's eyeballs to the west and now to a large extent China, and as long as the current system continues will struggle to have the resources to ensure a good level of quality of water etc.

I understand that whitewave but I just feel the same amount of gung-ho should go into making sure people have water to drink and sanitise their living practices and it's not as though ordinary people have the resources to bring that about themselves.

And we say the world is now a civilised place

hollydaze oil = western interest and western investment.

water = no western interest and no investment.

Poverty = high level of uncontrolled disease and high morbidity

Rich countries = high level of disease control and low morbidity

easy really

So if the Australians with their expertise and resources have not managed to deal with it very efficiently, then I am not sure that Africa can.

Is that more by choice than anything else though. As the other link I gave shows, Africa has an enormous amount of water that could be tapped into - you can bet your bottom dollar that if it was oil reserves instead of water, it would be gushing out of the ground as we type.

I should be reassured that the major hospitals at least have contingency plans for cases - picture in the Telegraph of protective clothing for staff at "our" hospital the Royal Free in Hampstead. I don't think it is being alarmist to "be prepared" but given DH's immune system still a sobering thought!

JessM, I should have realised that! Listening to too much BBC or ITV telling us that we only have so many beds. DH was trained in disaster control years ago, but of course has been retired for a long time

I am not so sure that Australia has dealt effectively with their water shortages; Sydney has more rainfall than London for instance, but they have not built enough reservoirs to cope in the dry spells. Apparently, they wanted N. Queensland to pipe water down to them as NQ are more efficient and built a huge dam there to conserve water. (Like piping water from the UK to Southern Spain or further!)

So if the Australians with their expertise and resources have not managed to deal with it very efficiently, then I am not sure that Africa can.

This is an old link and includes some pom-bashing, but if anyone is interested:
blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/markmann/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sydney_gets_twice_as_much_rain_as_london_why_are_we_short_of_water/

Sorry JessM it does get too much doesn't it. #hangsheadinshame.

durhamjen

I was thinking about Australia and their water shortages and how have they dealt effectively with that. I was also thinking about systems being set up similar to those that have been suggested on this site:

www.ifpri.org/blog/what-s-really-causing-water-scarcity-africa-south-sahara

I remembered reading about water supplies in Africa so I have looked it up and found it (a miracle in itself):

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17775211

This is why I don't understand why nothing has been done - if there is so much water there, why isn't it being retrieved for local people to use? The survey was done by the British but what good is a survey if they don't act on it. I can find nothing online about it after 2012.

I'm sure the UK could set up isolation hospitals in an emergency, not just a ward or two Rosequartz and could do so very quickly. There are copious civil defence plans in place in the UK for all kinds of eventualities. e.g huge warehouses full of heavy equipment, all wrapped in oily rags and ready to go if there was a major natural disaster or nuclear attack. There are systems in place to get all the public services working together. There is a substantial military medical corps and many ex army medics who can be called into service as reservists. Also we are an educated population that are linked into tv, internet etc, so it is easy to get urgent public health messages or public emergency messages out in minutes.
An example of the difficulties in Nigeria, which we tend to think of as rich, educated and civilised these days - a few years ago some local clerics in the deprived Muslim area of the country became convinced that the polio vaccination programme was a western plot to poison muslims. This delayed the eradication of polio in Nigeria and took some years to turn around.
And there is the more recent and awful example of the girls being abducted there.
Please, please Nelliemoser don't start a cutting and pasting craze or we will end up having to read everybody's posts twice . Date and time of post can refer back to previous post.

Exactly Duramjen which point I made on page 1 of this thread on Wed 30-Jul-14 17:06:25

Hollydaze
I would suggest that in a lot of places in Africa many hospitals are very rudimentary.

I do not think our standards of infection control would work if there was no reliable supply of clean and treated hot and cold water at the turn of a tap. enough disposable aprons masks etc.

In a lot of places woman and children spend hours walking to wells or very poor and dirty streams to collect enough water to drink or cook with daily.

Never mind trying to be able to clean a small hospital or clinic well enough to keep the environment completely free from contamination.

Holly, in order to have sanitation, water is needed. Most countries that have problems just do not have the water. If you are concerned, you could give money to either Practical Action or Wateraid.

I think we are right to be concerned, but not worried. The incubation period is quite long in comparison to flu and the symptoms similar to other ailments.
I do wonder if we have the facilities to cope if someone spread the disease to several others - we do not seem to have a lot of isolation beds to cope with more than a small outbreak.

Apparently a man has died in Spain from ebola; he had been in Liberia. We will have to wait to see if it is contained there.

Bush meat (a potential source of the virus) is regularly confiscated at Heathrow Airport, so people must be trying to smuggle it in to consume here.

^ If the poorer countries had access to clean water, proper sanitation and better medical facilities,^

I can never understand how, or why, that hasn't been achieved. When you think of all the money and charitable organisation that have been working in poorer countries for decades, why isn't it improving? Why can't the governments that act quickly to send in troops act just as quickly to help those living in such dire circumstances?

I am quite calm thank you - which is more than can be said for some that went from 0 - 60. As said before - it's probably best not attribute one's own personality traits to other people; I rarely get ruffled or agitated and seldom on a forum - what's the point?

I have a reasonable amount of confidence in the more developed countries' ability to deal with cases of Ebola (though I don't think it's wise to be too complacent). According to the WHO website, Ebola is not contagious during the incubation period but only at the onset of symptoms - and, as has been said, is harder to contract than airborne diseases. Presumably someone who came from a high risk area who exhibited the Ebola-like symptoms would be quarantined. Also, assuming that every infected person was quickly identified and there wasn't a huge influx of cases, the likely survival rate in developed countries would be much higher than in poorer countries.

What a shame that it is only when the more developed countries fear they may be at risk that this becomes an issue. If the poorer countries had access to clean water, proper sanitation and better medical facilities, there would be less incidence of these terrible diseases and a higher survival rate. Maybe the focus should be more on that.

Now now, poppet, go and make yourself a nice cuppa. Or a gin and tonic. It might calm you down. Getting cross isn't good for the blood pressure

I thought you were too MiceElf

The difference being, whenim64, I'm not worrying about it - just not having something attributed to me that's incorrect. I do have a break - I leave the puter running and pop in and out when I'm back in the kitchen (and not on here at all yesterday)

For someone who tries not to do a lot of worrying, you're ripping this thread apart like a Jack Russell with a rabbit, HollyDaze.

Do go and have a break!