Does Ebola have a silver lining? While around 10,000 people have died of the disease, of whom one was in the United States.
Writing in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases a researcher from the University of Kansas, A. Townsend Peterson, points out that scientific and pharmaceutical interest in West Nile virus only took off after it appeared in the US in 1999. Something similar is happening with Ebola.
‘How many other neglected diseases must await this process of spread to affluent regions and infection of affluent people, making the transition from neglected tropical disease to emerging infection, before they also will see investment and innovation?” he asks.
'The simple fact is that the world has become very small in recent decades. Connectivity via rapid travel on local, regional, and global scales makes epidemic spread massively efficient. This global linkage means that a person almost anywhere in the world can be in the US or Europe within 48 hours, and thus that no disease outbreak anywhere can be considered as unlinked to the US or Europe, at least potentially. The implications for disease control and prevention, and particularly for taking care of “American” interests in that regard, are immense—the number and variety of diseases that may come into play are considerable.
[link url="http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003509"]Full PLOS Neglected Tropical Medicine article[/link]