Ebola has not only taken the lives of thousands of people, but it’s about to indirectly take the lives of thousands more. The fear surrounding the disease has caused more problems than actual virus, with wealthy nations threatening to cut off travel to hard countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone and now vaccination problems. As we discussed in class although there are dangers to getting vaccinated the potential side affects greatly outweigh contracting the disease. For that reason well-developed nations help to provide poorer countries with vaccinations in hopes to improve quality of life for the citizens and reduce the spread of dangerous viruses around the world.
Ebola has thrown an interesting wrench into that equation. Parents from countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone are no longer vaccinating their children from deadly diseases such as Hepatitis and Yellow Fever. They fear that taking their children to hospitals to receive vaccinations will result in their child contracting Ebola and dying from that instead. Before the Ebola outbreak 97% of babies were vaccinated routinely, now that number has plummeted to only 27%. (NPR).
This fear could lead to disastrous numbers of deaths and an increase in previously controlled viruses. In West African countries children are already more susceptible to disease at a young age. In Liberia about 7% of children will die before the age of 5 due to disease. (NPR). While this number is alarming it is kept relatively low due to the vaccines from foreign countries. If parents don’t continue to vaccine their children and countries don’t continue to supply vaccines we could see this number skyrocket in the near future.
It would be a shame to reverse all the work that has been done to vaccine children due to this fear of Ebola. If Ebola and outbreaks of other deadly diseases happened at the same time I’m not sure that the health care system of West Africa would survive. Even those in the United States could be in trouble if something more contagious than Ebola like the measles begins to have an outbreak. Due to the fact that Ebola is relatively hard to contract it was easy to contain in the United States. However over recent fear that vaccines can cause Autism or damage children many families have decided not to vaccinate their kids. So for if some reason measles returns to the US as a result of an epidemic in West Africa, many more children would be susceptible to catching it than in previous years.
For now there is nothing we can do but sit back and wait. It seems that we are powerless to protect these children and their families from whatever diseases they face. Hopefully the fear of Ebola will settle and children will continue to be vaccinated that way no future epidemics will arise. If there is one thing to be learned it is that something fear is more dangerous than any disease could be.
Works Cited:
Bidwell, Matthew, Margaret A. Maglione, and Alexandria Smith. “Safety of Vaccines Used for Routine Immunization of US Children: A Systematic Review.” Safety of Vaccines Used for Routine Immunization of US Children: A Systematic Review. Pediatrics, 1 July 2014. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
Hamilton, Jon. “Ebola Is Keeping Kids From Getting Vaccinated In Liberia.” NPR. NPR, 23 Oct. 2014. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
This was a great post–I had read about the possibility of Ebola spreading because people aren’t willing to seek out treatment and try to attempt their own home remedies, but this definitely could become a big problem. I wonder if when they (hopefully) have an ebola vaccine people in west Africa will still be reluctant to go to hospitals to get that?
This is a great, eye opening post. I never even considered the threat of outbreaks of other diseases due to lack of vaccination during the Ebola epidemic. This is actually very scary to think about, as it could lead to multiple disease outbreaks at once, in already struggling African countries. It seems like the most vital thing to do at the moment is create an Ebola vaccine.