Ebola, a hemorrhagic virus that broke out in the mid-1970s in central Africa, had a much more serious outbreak in 2014 in West Africa and there is a current outbreak now (November-December 2018)) in the Congo ("Ebola virus disease," 2018). While West and East African nations closed their borders to individuals coming out of the stricken nations such as Sierra Leone, the United States should not do the same in any new serious Ebola outbreak from that part of the world (Uganda, 2018). This is because shutting the border to West Africans would hugely affect the economy of those countries as well as their livelihoods and abilities to get around and it does not amount to stopping the virus spread.
Secondly, sealing the US border would be constraining the resources that address the epidemic in the affected countries such as humanitarian aids, human resources, doctors and nurses and hospital equipment and most important biological sampling. All the outlined resources require international transporting across the borders, and hence the ban would only exacerbate the problems because of the border shut down (Abdullah & Rashid, 2017). Additionally, the US has the ability to explore other ways to prevent its citizens from Ebola exposure like more stringent screenings at the border taking into consideration that symptoms take time to manifest (“Origins of Ebola,” 2018).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Thirdly, restricting the border to prevent entry of West Africans may promote informal border crossings with no accountability, and this would spell more doom. People with financial might will be traveling to immediate countries before entering America in addition to encouraging people to lie about their previous destination. Instead, the U.S should thoroughly screen people at the borders to evaluate signs of illnesses. After all, until they have symptoms, Ebola patients are not contagious ("Ebola virus disease," 2018). If the U.S seals the US border, it would be a response that is ill-proportioned to a level of risk that is manageable and would only worsen the outbreak. Closing their borders to individuals coming out of the stricken nations cannot make the Ebola risk zero until it is controlled in West Africa.
References
Ebola virus disease. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/ebola/en/
Ebola virus disease. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/disease/ebola/en/
Uganda, U. (2018). Update on the Response to the Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC). | U.S. Embassy in Uganda. Retrieved from
https://ug.usembassy.gov/update-on-the-response-to-the-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc/
(2018). Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271526033_Exposing_the_Origins_of_the_Ebola_Outbreak_Urging_for_a_Shift_in_Response_from_Reactive_to_Proactive
In Abdullah, I., & In Rashid, I. O. D. (2017). Understanding West Africa's ebola epidemic:
Towards a political economy .
