And Now, Direct From Mbandaka.....

I keep hearing about Americans who are going to Africa as tourists.  It's the new hot place to visit, or so I am told.  And then I hear the news from the city of Mbandaka.  For those of you who are not up on your geography, Mbandaka is a city of just about 1 million people in central Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  And for those of you who are not up on your news, Mbandaka is also the site of the first cases in years of the Ebola virus in Africa in an urban setting.  When Ebola outbreaks occur in the villages in the countryside, they are easier to contain.  Ebola is spread by direct contact with fluids containing the virus.  In a village, the number of people exposed to the virus is much easier to control.  Once the virus gets into a city, it is particularly hard to keep those affected isolated from others.  That makes the cases just found in Mbandaka a very dangerous thing indeed.

The Republic of Congo is supposedly "deciding" whether or not to declare this an emergency.  It's not a very hard decision to make.  If the Ebola spreads to more than a few households in the city, it could grow to hit thousands or even tens of thousands of victims.  A pandemic of this sort could leak to mass death.  So let me clue in the government of the Congo:  IT"S AN EMERGENCY!!!!!

The USA needs to help contain this outbreak just as we did when Ebola hit the nations on the West African coast a few years ago.  Oh, and if you're planning on going to Africa as a tourist, you might want to postpone that visit until the situation clears.