We're all in the fight against Ebola virus

Health workers put on their protective clothing prior to visiting Ebola victims at a World Health Organization health center in the Liberian capital Monrovia, on October 3, 2014. By far the most deadly epidemic of Ebola on record has spread into five west African countries since the start of the year, infecting more than 7,000 people and killing about half of them.

 (Photo: PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images)

Monica Green: The identification last week of the first imported case of Ebola into the United States is a turning point.

 

The identification last week of the first imported case of Ebola into the United States is a turning point in the history of this newly emerging human disease.

Yes, the spread outside of Africa has been predicted for some time. The worldwide interconnections created by commercial airline travel have made rapid spread of disease possible for the past half-century.

And yes, there will be many specific ramifications of this case in Dallas as the U.S. population learns the concept of "contact tracing" and implements the protocols of isolation and infection control.

But the bigger lesson we should be learning is that there is no "us vs. them" in this.

All human diseases — from malaria to smallpox to cholera to HIV/AIDS — started out as local outbreaks. Some diseases have had thousands of years to achieve their global dissemination. Others, like HIV/AIDS and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which broke out in 2002-03), needed only a few decades or, in the case of SARS, weeks to achieve that global spread.

But they all grew into global diseases for the same fundamental reason: Communication, connecting with our families and trading partners, is what makes us human.

Likewise, tending to our sick loved ones and caring for our dead make us human. Thomas E. Duncan, who struggles for his life now in a Dallas hospital, seems to have been infected for no other reason than, out of compassion, he attempted to aid a neighbor.

We have tremendously powerful science to aid in the development of vaccines and therapies for Ebola. And we have skilled and brave health-care workers and public-health investigators to track the disease and treat those afflicted. We need more of all of them. But we also need to pause and reflect that communicable diseases thrive because we are a species of communication and connection.

Communicating and connecting has its dangers. But it is also what has allowed us to meet the challenges of disease in the past. We will do so again.

Monica H. Green is a history professor at Arizona State University. She specializes in the global history of health, including the history of the Black Death.

Via:AZcentral