Ebola Virus: How Countries Cooperate On Finding The Cure And Helping The Affected Countries?
Ebola virus How countries cooperate on finding the cure and helping the affected countries? Support to the West Africa. Collective action problem.
Ebola virus disease is a serious, mostly fatal, disease transmitted by animals and humans. Scientists initially detected the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (now the outbreak in these countries is controlled and unrelated to the West Africa outbreak). Researchers named the disease after the Ebola River that flows in Congo. There were 19 outbreaks of Ebola that have occurred in Africa over the past 40 years. Ebola is characterized by initial flu-like symptoms which later progress to vomiting, rash, diarrhea, and internal/external bleeding. Infected persons die within 10 days as no specific treatment or vaccine exists. There are two main types of the Ebola virus: Ebola-Zaire and Ebola-Sudan. Both of these types were reported in 12 outbreaks in Congo, Sudan, Gabon, and Uganda until the year 2003(Chowell et al. 2004). The most obvious difference between them is the lower mortality rate of Sudan ebolavirus infections. For example, the outbreak in the Gulu district of northern Uganda from August 2000 to January 2001 had 425 cases with 224 deaths (53% case fatality). Two previous outbreaks of Sudan ebolavirus (in 1976 and 1979) had similar mortality rate (53% and 66%). However, individuals with the Zairian type of this viral disease normally had 80 to 90% of fatal cases (Towner et al. 2004).
To start with, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are two types of countries with reported cases of Ebola. There are three countries (Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia) which have widespread and intense transmission and some others have just a small number of cases, like Mali, Senegal, Spain, Nigeria and the United States. All these mentioned countries are the main actors in Ebola crisis. However, there are a lot of others which try to help the victims by providing necessary support, like Cuba, Canada, Australia and a great number of European countries. These are equally important actors united by common interests, the most important of which is inventing the vaccine. Each state should have an incentive to do the researches of a cure as the Ebola virus can easily spread and reach any country of the world as many people travel to affected areas. Another interest is to do everything which is not related with cure but helping people to survive, for instance, supporting financially.
Most of help is provided either by separate states or international organizations, both, non-governmental and governmental in which two or more states interact in order to produce a particular result.
