ebola

Nigeria’s response to Ebola has drawn high praise now that the concerted effort by government has stopped the disease in its tracks.  Nigeria rapidly mobilized domestic resources and used house-to-house information campaigns to educate the populace.

Like others, we’ve written lots about Ebola over the past weeks: the insufficient funding and effort to the response in West Africa, the importance of well-qualified leadership at WHO, the role of health systems in disease response, the futility of travel bans, am...

How much is actually being spent on Ebola by donor governments, organizations, and private individuals? The short answer is that we don’t really know.

Since the first case of Ebola appeared last year, the virus has infected nearly 10,000 people.  The epidemic is concentrated in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea — post-conflict countries with incredibly weak health systems.

Momentum seems to be building on Capitol Hill for some kind of West African travel ban as an anti-Ebola measure. It sounds like a simple solution. But here’s why a travel ban is pointless—or could even make us less safe. 

The World Bank on Wednesday released a report titled “The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic: Short and Medium Term Estimates for West Africa,” which we and other co-authors blogged about yesterday on the World Bank’s site. 

The priority for policymakers concerned about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa should be to respond to the existing outbreak, treat the victims, and contain its spread. But the longer term lesson is that we need to be willing to spend more on global health.