Spread too thin: Africa's next Ebola outbreak

单集文稿 ...

• 00:03

  The Economist.

• 00:10

  Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.

• 00:13

  I'm Jason Palmer.

• 00:19

  Today on the show, profiling the polling favorite for Britain's next Prime Minister

• 00:23

  and the warm, cozy, useless world of celebrity book clubs.

• 00:34

  But first...

• 00:43

  On Sunday, the World Health Organization made official what had been brewing in headlines for days.

• 00:49

  "I declare the public health emergency of international concern over the Ebola outbreak

• 00:55

  in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has already spread to Uganda."

• 01:02

  Ebola is, to put it mildly, a horrible pathogen spread only by contact with bodily fluids

• 01:08

  that causes a hemorrhagic fever that can have a huge fatality rate.

• 01:12

  That WHO designation signals a more complicated outbreak that demands a more coordinated response.

• 01:19

  Africa had been getting better at that kind of response.

• 01:23

  But this time, things are different.

• 01:25

  What we know so far is that this Ebola outbreak seems to be shaping up

• 01:29

  to be the worst since 2014-16, when more than 10,000 people died in West Africa.

• 01:38

  John McDermott is our Chief Africa Correspondent.

• 01:44

  Initial data suggest that more than 100 people have died in the east

• 01:49

  of the Democratic Republic of Congo, perhaps around 400 cases,

• 01:53

  but these are almost certainly underestimates.

• 全部文稿