The following opinion pieces and editorial discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Financial Times: Ebola stirs noise while silence greets other killers
Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

“…Maternal mortality and other scourges like it may not fit the typical public health professional’s definition of an emergency. The monthly toll does not readily fall — there has been little improvement in Sierra Leone since the beginning of this decade — but nor does it rise. An infectious disease, by contrast, can kill at a faster rate with every week that it is allowed to spread. But they are emergencies all the same. There is no contradiction between fighting maternal mortality and preventing the next Ebola epidemic. Both can be stopped with the same kind of long-term investment in health infrastructure. These investments do not involve cutting-edge technology, although they are logistically complex. They will take time, but they will also endure” (7/29).

New York Times: Ebola Outbreak in Liberia
Lewis Brown, minister for information of Liberia

“…The Liberian government is unequivocal in its determination to help local and international medical teams reach the affected. … This week we established a national task force charged with public education, ensuring that people take active steps to limit contamination and the spread of the virus. … Through a united effort — national, regional and international — this outbreak can be contained” (7/28).

New York Times: The Ebola Outbreak
“…Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has declared a national Ebola emergency. The governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria must also act with equal urgency to raise public awareness, put additional trained medical personnel on the ground, and trace patients’ contacts with others. The current Ebola outbreak is more than a sum of national emergencies. It is now a regional crisis, and the whole of West Africa must act to contain it” (7/29).